Depression is everywhere

and I'm as guilty as the next person of it.  Looking over friend's blogs and websites (as well as talking to them in person), it's hard not to notice a pattern.  Everyone is depressed, feeling dejected, frustrated, sad and alone.  Whatever you want to call it, I think it's an epidemic.  

I wish I could help my friends... no one wants to see people they love in so much pain.  I'm no pinnacle of cheer, but I can see the good things, too.  In old movies, the characters' hearts were broken and they thought life would never recover but then they see something good and innocent, like children playing in the street, and suddenly they remember why they and all of us must go on.  There are so many simple pleasures in life.  As good as it feels to earn grades, go onto graduate school, get internships, etc., the real things that keep me going at St. Olaf are not career preparations and resume builders.  It's things like walking behind Mellby a dozen times a day in the fall when the sidewalk is engulfed by a tunnel of color and rustling.  Or being able to sit under the trees and read.  Or smelling the Malt-O-Meal, going for walks into town, coming inside on a cold night, watching snow fall for hours at a time, and making easy mac.  These keep me happy (and sane) when nothing else will.  Even if you're doing well in school, have friends, maybe even a fabulous boyfriend, it's the minutae that makes all the difference as far as I'm concerned. 

Maybe it's part of living in the moment.  In Star Wars, Yoda chides Luke for always looking to the future.  When I was younger, I thought that perhaps Yoda had had one too many fights with R2.  What's wrong with looking to the future if you're unhappy in the present?  After years of watching that movie, I decided the implication that inevitably the future would come and suddenly the present would be alluring and livable is dangerous.   What if the future isn't all it's cracked up to be?  What if you don't get into your top grad/law/med school?   For many people, it's these big, risky aspects (perhaps the more societally recognized things?) that make or break life, but I think that if everyone got excited about drinking lemonade, brushing their pet, or going for a walk outside in the sun and let themselves live in that moment instead of passing it over as unimportant and just filler material until the next big break, the world would be a much better place.