You’ll get your (depression) from different places, to those that I receive it from.
This morning I was riding my bike in the shed (I’m getting better at this now, getting more disciplined) , I decided to listen to Gerry Cinnamon as he has been a recent source of inspiration to me.
People will laugh at him or will take the moral high ground that he’s not capable, but he is a poet and the most important thing for me, is that he speaks to me. Some of the themes through Gerry Cinnamon's work are very, very poignant for right now and some of the lyrics are as follows:
“I’d rather have holes in my shoes than be drowning in gold”
“This is your life. And it’s ending one moment at a time”
I thought about that today and then listened again, and then realised that it’s not the case of trying to ‘see this out’.
It’s a case of trying to live through this and continue to live.
My life is too short to just exist and the struggle over the last two weeks has meant that I felt that I was existing (at least in between the work I was trying to do to stabilise the business) once that work is complete and we're moving on from here, then it’s about making a contribution that helps you to feel alive.
For the moment, I’m with my kids, doing History with Rosie and Callum. I’ve tried to talk to them about Historical concepts which then introduce philosophical concepts, which then help to assemble the building blocks of their moral character.
All the time with my kids, poking them with a philosophical stick, letting them realise how lucky they are and how important it is that they know that there are people who aren't as lucky.
With Grace, it’s science because she is a scientist and trying to rationalise the situation which we find ourselves in through science.
For my kids, this is short term (even though it doesn’t feel like it for Rosie, who is now unable to see her boyfriend) .This is a long summer holiday for them because they know they are here for the next 70 years.
If the rest of us can see this, if we can regain the imagination that we had when we were 10-20 years old, and we can reapply that to the life we have following this, then we can live here and not only that, we can thrive here.
We might not be richer (and we may well be a lot poorer) but we will have a life, even if we don’t have a living.
And so, the last bit of inspiration which came to me at the end of Gerry Cinnamon was The Shawshank Redemption quote “get busy living or get busy dying”.
Blog Post Number - 2329