We lose many of our great people to the illnesses of
the mind. It is sad and tragic and for those who do not suffer from such deep
and terrible sadness it is hard to understand what people go through during the
depressive times in their lives. It must be the dark abyss where the tunnel of
darkness has no end and your feet never touch solid ground.
We have heard of the madness of some of the great
composers, Beethoven, Robert Schuman, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov just to name a
few. It is written in biographies that all of these men were deeply disturbed by
a great sadness that sent them into strange rages, often obliterating
friendships, disrupting the houses they worked for and often secluding themselves
into loneliness only to deepen the madness.
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Madness was not limited to musical genius it touched
the art world as deeply with Vincent Van Gough being one of the most famous
when her cut off his own ear. It is said that Michael Angelo struggled with his
demons and we of course we know Edvard Munch famous for his painting The Scream
must have suffered in his mind and tried to paint the demons away.
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This is not something new to the art world and it
seems that those that are so incredibly excellent at what they do are the most
afflicted with this life sucking illness. As a young musician I as often told “I
needed to pay my dues”. I often wondered what that meant and never really cared
to find out as it always seemed to be working for nothing or playing the dives
until you get discovered. I now believe that those dues are paid by your soul
and your sanity and come from deep within you and are not about the struggles
to be discovered but about the struggles that so many artists have in their
minds. Those are dues we pay and some of us with our lives by our own hand.
Depression is not limited to just artists, it has
touched many families around the world from every walk of life and every socio
economic status. This is not an illness of the rich and famous although it
seems that way because we only acknowledge it when we hear they have done
something drastic. We have neglected the homeless, the single parent, the
elderly and often the working individual who can cover it up day-by-day, the
widowed spouse, the lost son and everyone under the sun.
Clara Hughes is one of Canada’s most famous Olympians.
She has fought depression and came forward about her battle. She rode across Canada
on her bike and received what I thought was very little news coverage. Terry
Fox (although not struggling with depression, he still had a life threatening illness) died during his efforts for cancer. Is it only when death occurs that we as
humans stand up and take notice? If so this is a part of humanity I want no
part of. Can we just reach out and allow people to be mentally ill without
judgment? We may never understand how to treat the causes and we may very well
loose so many other people to the creeping darkness of depression but we must
allow people to no longer be ashamed. We spend so much focus on control of ourselves
from our bodies to our emotions to our minds and when our minds do not react
the way we have been taught they must, the overwhelming sensation fills every
space and just breathing becomes an effort.
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Clara Hughes
Terry Fox
All Photos Courtesy of Google Images
