CREATIVE URGES

Pleasure or Happiness or Joy
I saw a topic in another group that asked when was the last time something simple made you happy. I pondered that question and couldn’t really think of anything. I feel content on a Saturday morning when I can rest and have coffee on the porch. I feel satisfaction and a sense of purpose in a job well done or a poem that comes out right. Then I read a magazine article today that said there is a subtle but real difference between pleasure and happiness. The example for pleasure was food. You feel pleasure while you’re eating and when you finish eating the pleasure stops. That’s why people can overeat. The example for happiness was more like how you feel after you’ve accomplished something like, ohh . . doing your exercises or finishing a project. I’m not sure I get it. I have Dysthemia. That means chronic low grade depression with occasional major depressive episodes. I can’t remember a time when I felt “happy.” I had to seek the Lord many years ago to find that there is a huge difference between what the world calls happiness and what the Bible calls joy. Happiness is an emotion. Joy is a spiritual force that comes from indwelling of the Holy Spirit of Christ. I have absolutely experienced joy in the presence of God in prayer, or when studying His word. I have experienced joy in witnessing somebody accept the Gospel and turn their lives over to the Lord. I have watched an angry bitter woman blossom into a gentle, loving person because of a new relationship with God. So for me, for now, joy will have to be enough. Perhaps this is really more a statement of faith than a blog. I think I’m preaching to myself again.[/SIZE}

I post this here because he speaks for me, too, and I loved him well.


The Depressed Optimist
by William King (aka Flyder)


I, along with a rapidly growing minority of people, suffer from and live with a serious illness called depression. Nearly all people have a bout of depression in their lives. Some argue that it can be healthy as it allows folks to appreciate happiness. But most folks are not depressed as a rule, year in and year out, with an illness that is often ever present for weeks on end. I have been depressed since my teens, but was only diagnosed as having it as an illness 5 years ago after having a nervous breakdown. I have the support of a wonderful doctor and am on medication, which, though by no means a cure, helps to keep the blackest death depression at bay. Kinda.

Some folks think that depression is all in the mind and a good cup of bloody tea will cure all. Such folk need a sledgehammer taking to their ignorance, if not indeed their entire tea set.


Other depressed people are, however, brilliant folk to talk to. Not only do they understand and empathise, but they are also the best source of help I have ever come across. I went to a depression support group thinking that it was going to be morbid and absolutely horrid. I had more laughs and felt so much better in myself relating to other’s tales of escapism, coping and not coping. I realised with joy that I was not alone in my strange habits, tactics and attitudes. Telling of a situation where I wasn’t coping and hearing folk laughing and saying “I did that!” followed by them asking “and did you do this?” or whatever, and often I had, was simply wonderful. And hearing my life from someone else’s mouth is heart warmingly hilarious!