I can’t understand – depression due to stay-at-home

I am getting depressed seeing so many people offering so many different “cures” for the expressed depression that others are complaining about. The stay-at-home situation can be seen as the proximate cause of this self-expressed “depressionitis”.

My depression, being dependent on the depression others are supposedly expressing, therefore, has no cure.

Let us now analyze whether there is enough reason for this self-assessment of “depressionitis”.

When there was no COVID-19 pandemic and when everyone was allowed to sit together, socialize, talk, hold hands, all that people did was sit together and fiddle with their phones – sending messages (so old fashioned), posting on Facebook, Instagram, tweet on twitter, or bother others with WhatsApp forwards; nary a thought about the other people sitting at the table.

There was one extenuating factor though – all the others around the table were also doing the same thing. Meeting for a face-to-face with others (it used to be like “lunch on the third Thursday of the month”, the fourth Thursday in November being Thanksgiving Holiday in the US) where everyone is now focusing on her mobile phone. That is irony that is missing. Therefore depression, I guess.

By the way, this depression due to being home-bound appears to be a disease of the west. So, you see, Wuhan gave the world COVID-19 and the west is responding with its “depressionitis”.

Let us digress a little bit and see what people did in the antiquated days when these fancy social media stuff were not there – there was always the backyard-gossip. It is that virus that has spread far beyond one’s backyard.

Does this “depressionitis” hold good for DINKs? Despite not having kids, before COVID-19, they were too stressed out to be depressed - the meetings with one’s bosses (this is the never-let-go-leech), colleagues, business partners, teammates, juniors, contractors, the commuting, never end.

With the lock down, the thing continues, and what more, it continues when you “arrive at the office” the next morning, just going upstairs to your office-at-home. Basically, nothing has changed. Therefore, what you experience is not “depressionitis” but continually being stressed out. Miscued diagnosis.

Oh, I did miss out on one thing – you could not take the next flight out to continue the meeting in a different continent! Yeah, now I see why you could be depressed, beyond being merely stressed out.

Of course, COVID-19 came at the most inappropriate time. It spoiled your summer vacation plan. Nothing can be more depressing than that.

I know you well enough that you got itchy to get back into the middle of the action less than halfway through your meticulously planned vacation, only to be reminded that there would be a penalty for cutting short your days of stay at the resort hotel. You went into depression for the rest of your vacation period. My sympathies.

For those with kids, when you went to office, you thought it was bliss – full eight hours, at the least, of freedom from home! No nagging husband, no pesky little kids. That bliss is gone now. You have reasons to be depressed.

Yeah, now you have to do all your household chores. No maid or manservant to help you, because of the lockdown. You think, “How sweet it was when I could come home, throw my office bag anywhere I please and demand a cup of coffee, and some samosas to go with it. Now, I have to make that coffee, not only for myself but for my wife, too. Alas, I am not even coming from office.” One sympathizes, just as James Bond did for the skewered lamb that he had at dinner in Casino Royale.

I have a ready cure for you. Do not allow yourself to be depressed. Have a variety of interests. If you cannot see NBA basketball, no fret. Sit down and re-enact in your mind, the last time you were at an NBA game and what happened there that gave you immense, however fleeting it was, pleasure. Or, it could be the last time India won World T20. Let that bring a smile on your face. Imagination is free. No one will know why you are smiling – an added incentive.

Or, with nothing to do, you cannot boast to your friend that you wished there were thirty hours to a day so that you can finish doing those things (be honest with yourself – there was never such a day and you were just keeping up with the Jones). Now, boast to your friend that you are catching up on all those readings that you had put off, no less of a lie, but an anti-depressant. That should count for some.

Or, to go easy on yourself, give your brain something to think about when you are not doing much of thinking. Boredom or depression will vanish.

To end this long nonsensical rant, just be honest with yourself. You would not feel depressed. You have nothing to do and so you are doing nothing. What is the big deal with that? Is lazing around against the law? Indulge in that.

Or, just as I am doing – write nonsense, no worse than the last WhatsApp message you forwarded. That will get you out of your depression.

To twist and turn the words of London Breed, mayor of San Francisco, I was depressed of hearing that people are depressed because of the stay-at-home orders.

I have now the definitive cure.

“Don’t blame it on COVID-19; blame it on yourself!”

Raghuram Ekambaram