Thomas Moore has a chapter "Gifts of Depression" in his book, "Care of the Soul."
"For the soul, depression is an initiation, a rite of passage. If we think that depression, so empty and full, is void of imagination, we may overlook its initiatory aspects....emptiness can be rife with feeling-tone, images of catharsis, and emotions of regret and loss...."
"Depression grants the gift of experience not as a literal fact but as an attitude toward yourself. You get a sense of having lived through something, of being older and wiser. You know that life is sufferieng, and that knowledge makes a difference. You can't enjoy the bouncy, carefree innocense of youth any longer, a realization that entails both sadness because of the loss, and pleasure in a new feeling of self-acceptance and self-knowledge. This awareness of age has a halo of melancholy around it, but it also enjoys a measure of nobility."
"Naturally, there is a resistance to this incursion of Saturn that we call depression. It's difficult to let go of youth, because that release requires an acknowledgment of death."
C. 1992, Care of the Soul. Thomas Moore. Harper Perennial, NY.
