You can’t stop.
Life’s highs can be exhilarating, they inspire us, allow us to be in the moment and forget about the things that worry us, scare us.
But life also has lows, and they can be crippling. They bring our lives to a halt if we let them. They stop our progress, make us curl up into a ball of sorrow where our pain is compounded; it becomes our entire world. (Read This: 21 Things Modern Men Need to Stop Doing)
We stop.
We follow the road of sorrow often into solitude and pity.
Why me?
Why can’t I just get a break with x or y?
It consumes us. Darkness all around and hope nowhere to be found.
The moment when the slide begins is the moment you can stop it. And you can stop it. The depths are a choice. If you don’t want to get out of them you don’t have to, but you’re going to merely exist in a dark purgatory avoiding life and light.
The way out is up and forward.
Motion is the cure for sorrow and sadness and depression.
Doing something is being something, it’s creating something, earning something, giving reason to why you’re here, a purpose to the breaths you take in and the beats of your heart.
I’m working my way through, The Depression Cure, in which the author highlights the fact that depression doesn’t exist in modern hunter-gatherer tribes who’ve been studied for decades. It’s lower in the Amish population in the States than in any other sub-sect of that great nation.
The lives we live are out of line with the lines we’re genetically programmed to live.
We’re not meant to sit and glare at a screen, nor are we designed to live in a box, alone, nor drive instead of walk nor buy instead of hunt.
We eat in a way that’s out of line with how our DNA demands we eat.
With all of this, however, let’s talk merely about sorrow, about those moments when we get down, the beginning of what can become depression.
It’s A Tragedy, Wasted Talent Is.
The greatest tragedy in life is wasted talent.
De Niro says that line a dozen or more times in the movie A Bronx Tale. He hammers it home over and over again to his son in the movie, but also to the viewer, and if you’re a young kid watching that movie hopefully it hits you.
That line has stuck with me into my 30’s.
This article is that motion I mentioned earlier. I found myself getting down about something, something irrelevant, an obstacle that didn’t need to be an obstacle, but a way. Instead of turning the TV on and watching football, a Sunday routine for the past decade of my life, I went to the gym, then I sat down and started writing.
I’m the kind of guy that has to reason something out, I have to find the lack of logic in the state, then move it out of my system.
What I see and here in the multitude of emails and comments I get on this site and others are guys who are taking steps down that hole, they’re allowing emotion to carry them to a state that will lead to tragedy.
Once inaction takes hold, once you’ve sunk into sorrow and you’ve stopped marching forward it puts you in handcuffs and preventing you from realizing the potential, using the talent, living the life. (Read This: How to Deal with Sorrow Like Theodore Roosevelt)
Motion, getting up off your ass, working, doing something, using the gifts you have and the gifts you’ve earned, stops the free fall into darkness.
What you have to understand, as do I, is that even a moment spent in darkness is a waste. And even seconds, a single thought can lead you to a place where you become not only utterly useless to those who depend on you, but destructive to the man you have to become for them.
Fuck you. It’s not about you. It’s not about me. It’s not about the individual. When we think only about ourselves it compounds the justification for feeling sadness and sorrow. When you have something or something to work for, live for, hustle for, even if it’s an idea, something or someone in the future that isn’t yet in your life, you have something pulling you rather than pushing you.
Know that moment.
Know the source of the sorrow, the thought and the emotion that threaten your existence and fight.
At the very least, stand up and walk out of the door, get outside and into something, trouble, whatever, just force that little bitch of a voice that we all have within us to shut up and let the warrior, that aspect of you that sees challenges not curses, to rise and thrive.
It’s something that happens in seconds, the way up or the decent down, don’t let that moment pass without you being in control.
Don’t let your emotions carry you to a useless existence. Don’t let your weakness determine who you are.
Move. Man up and move.
About The Author
Chad Howse: Chad’s mission is to get you in the arena, ‘marred by the dust and sweat and blood’, to help you set and achieve audacious goals in the face of fear, and not only build your ideal body, but the life you were meant to live. He’ll give you the kick in the ass needed to help you live a big, ambitious life.
You can contact him at –
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There is only ONE person who can give YOUR LIFE MEANING to YOUR life, and YOU are that person.
If you cannot look at the face in the mirror and be ok with that image that person you see looking back at you, NO ONE can change YOU. you must change YOU.
You must discover/realize your PASSION in your life, and in doing so, YOU will find the meaning in it. NO ONE can do it for you. If you ADOPT what someone else believes you should be, you are NOT living your life and giving it meaning, you are living some one else belief.
Well written article. With pertinent advice.
Thank you