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Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
It seems that there is always someone posting about how aimless and depressed that they are. I think this article will help. I have this hanging on my door, and I think it is a great pick me up when you are feeling down. Here is the link and below is the text. Link

Strap on your gloves and get back in the ring

Maybe you feel as if you're living in a boxing ring.

The audience surrounds you - friends, family, enemies, co-workers, neighbors and, of course, the strangers. Some of them shout encouragement, others hurl insults, some laugh derisively, and a few look bored and detached.

Your opponent in the ring is called "life," but it takes on many personas. Sometimes it flails away at you pretty hard. Other times, it only bobs and weaves.

Paradoxically, it even spends time giving you lessons in survival, self-defense and courage - perhaps, you may speculate, just to keep you in the ring, just to keep the contest going. On occasion, it goes to its corner and gives you a short breather.

But lately, or even for some time now, life has been pounding on you with brutal indifference. Maybe on more than one occasion it has knocked you to the mat.

If that has happened, you've probably had a few moments, in your battered daze, to look out at the audience. Perhaps you've noticed that they react differently when you're crumpled up in pain and confusion than when you still have your feet under you.

For instance, your supporters may urgently encourage you to get up and rejoin the battle, as if the intensity of their exhortations will somehow levitate you off the canvas. In contrast, the sympathetic souls in their midst may exhibit looks of pity or shared pain. Some may even try to enter the ring and help you.

However, this is not permitted. In life, certain battles must be waged alone.

As for the hecklers, well, your misfortunes usually amplify their put-downs. Some love to see you fall. Even the previously indifferent may perk up a bit. After all, it's abhorrently interesting when people bleed.

Lying there, bruised and spent, you have a crucial decision to make. You have to decide whether to get up.

The audience, while vicariously involved, cannot make this call for you. While they may tell you what to do or how to do it, the doing itself remains singularly your burden, your responsibility.

As you consider all this, you may also notice that life stands there . . . waiting. It may even appear to be indifferent to what you decide.

Life has, after all, seen many a fighter - some strong and seemingly inexhaustible and others frail and easily subdued. It has all the time in the world while, for you, the count never stops and the clock keeps ticking.

What's more, life knows that, in the end, it will be left standing and you won't. Some day and some way, it will pummel you to the canvas and you won't get up . . . ever.

So, if this is you and your life right now, then you have to make up your mind . . . or your heart, rather.

Never mind the audience. Never mind life waiting out there.

Just reach down into your spirit, and if there's even the slightest glimmer of hope, the murkiest vision of a dream, or a mere twitch of fight left in you . . . then get up.

Not for the audience or for life . . . but for yourself.

Fighters do it every day.



Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Oct. 12, 1999
Great, now I am depressed over the time I wasted to read that!
 
Great, now I am depressed over the time I wasted to read that!
Me too!
rolleye.gif
 
Originally posted by: Red Dawn
Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
It seems that there is always someone posting about how aimless and depressed that they are. I think this article will help. I have this hanging on my door, and I think it is a great pick me up when you are feeling down. Here is the link and below is the text. Link

Strap on your gloves and get back in the ring

Maybe you feel as if you're living in a boxing ring.

The audience surrounds you - friends, family, enemies, co-workers, neighbors and, of course, the strangers. Some of them shout encouragement, others hurl insults, some laugh derisively, and a few look bored and detached.

Your opponent in the ring is called "life," but it takes on many personas. Sometimes it flails away at you pretty hard. Other times, it only bobs and weaves.

Paradoxically, it even spends time giving you lessons in survival, self-defense and courage - perhaps, you may speculate, just to keep you in the ring, just to keep the contest going. On occasion, it goes to its corner and gives you a short breather.

But lately, or even for some time now, life has been pounding on you with brutal indifference. Maybe on more than one occasion it has knocked you to the mat.

If that has happened, you've probably had a few moments, in your battered daze, to look out at the audience. Perhaps you've noticed that they react differently when you're crumpled up in pain and confusion than when you still have your feet under you.

For instance, your supporters may urgently encourage you to get up and rejoin the battle, as if the intensity of their exhortations will somehow levitate you off the canvas. In contrast, the sympathetic souls in their midst may exhibit looks of pity or shared pain. Some may even try to enter the ring and help you.

However, this is not permitted. In life, certain battles must be waged alone.

As for the hecklers, well, your misfortunes usually amplify their put-downs. Some love to see you fall. Even the previously indifferent may perk up a bit. After all, it's abhorrently interesting when people bleed.

Lying there, bruised and spent, you have a crucial decision to make. You have to decide whether to get up.

The audience, while vicariously involved, cannot make this call for you. While they may tell you what to do or how to do it, the doing itself remains singularly your burden, your responsibility.

As you consider all this, you may also notice that life stands there . . . waiting. It may even appear to be indifferent to what you decide.

Life has, after all, seen many a fighter - some strong and seemingly inexhaustible and others frail and easily subdued. It has all the time in the world while, for you, the count never stops and the clock keeps ticking.

What's more, life knows that, in the end, it will be left standing and you won't. Some day and some way, it will pummel you to the canvas and you won't get up . . . ever.

So, if this is you and your life right now, then you have to make up your mind . . . or your heart, rather.

Never mind the audience. Never mind life waiting out there.

Just reach down into your spirit, and if there's even the slightest glimmer of hope, the murkiest vision of a dream, or a mere twitch of fight left in you . . . then get up.

Not for the audience or for life . . . but for yourself.

Fighters do it every day.



Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Oct. 12, 1999
Great, now I am depressed over the time I wasted to read that!

lol
 
Seriously Red, I am even more depressed that an individual such as yourself happens to be part of the human race. I posted this article because I liked it, and I thought it might help some people. If you don't like it, then keep it to yourself, although I know that will be a stretch for a bitter old man who can't be positive about anything.
 
Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
Seriously Red, I am even more depressed that an individual such as yourself happens to be part of the human race. I posted this article because I liked it, and I thought it might help some people. If you don't like it, then keep it to yourself, although I know that will be a stretch for a bitter old man who can't be positive about anything.



He's very positive about a lot of things and he's not a "bitter old man" gee can't you even be creative in your insults?

Btw,to a truly depressed person that piece would have just made them feel even worse,if they had the energy to
finish reading it in the first place.
 
Originally posted by: Geekbabe
Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
Seriously Red, I am even more depressed that an individual such as yourself happens to be part of the human race. I posted this article because I liked it, and I thought it might help some people. If you don't like it, then keep it to yourself, although I know that will be a stretch for a bitter old man who can't be positive about anything.



He's very positive about a lot of things and he's not a "bitter old man" gee can't you even be creative in your insults?

I just find it amazing that I can try to create a thread to cheer up some people who are depressed and two "elite" members can come in and run their mouths and ruin what I was trying to do. I guess that's what AT has deteriorated to, and it's pathetic.

Edited for spelling
 
Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
Originally posted by: Geekbabe
Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
Seriously Red, I am even more depressed that an individual such as yourself happens to be part of the human race. I posted this article because I liked it, and I thought it might help some people. If you don't like it, then keep it to yourself, although I know that will be a stretch for a bitter old man who can't be positive about anything.



He's very positive about a lot of things and he's not a "bitter old man" gee can't you even be creative in your insults?

I just find it amazing that I can try to create a thread to cheer up some people who are depressed and a lifer and an "elite" member can come in and run their mouths and ruin what I was trying to do. I guess that's what AT has deteroriated to, and it's pathetic.



You got more than one bit of negative feedback on that article yet you chose to single Red out,tell you what,just because you try to "cheer up" the depressd,they don't have to fall all over you and act happy about it.

I worked in mental health for years,in all honesty that article is just another of the trite,condescending crap that gets foisted on the depressed all the time out of the mistaken belief that they can just pull themselves up by teir bootstraps and "snap out of it"
 
The article is just empty platitudes though. And some parts of it are just plain depressing, especially this one: "...for you, the count never stops and the clock keeps ticking. What's more, life knows that, in the end, it will be left standing and you won't. Some day and some way, it will pummel you to the canvas and you won't get up . . . ever."

ZV
 
Gobadgrs, I really admire the fact that you wanted some people to feel better. I'd prefer, here, how, just to tell you that.
 
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