Undepressing the Depressing Moments*

It turns out I'm too busy to search for a new place for my daily dose/scratch paper of my rambling thoughts/elusive tranquility. So, for the time being and a while, I might write even non thematic junks here.

For a couple of days I've been quite depressed, some with quite clear reasons/triggers, but there is always a little dosage of hormone gets involved. But then I found a quite effective counter attack. It's finding my sense of usefulness. Usually, when I feel a bit of stress or gloom, I would feel a glimpse of "nothing I do matters so I better just lay down and do nothing" kinda feeling. I felt it yesterday afternoon when I just woke up from a nap. Yes, a nap I stole from my supposedly on-duty-outside-office yesterday.

I notice some people (perhaps it's lifestyle magazines?) usually suggest something self indulging (or should I say selfish?), like shopping or pampering oneself in a spa to get rid of the stress or depression. But I found the effect is very temporary and even more depressing in the end when the fun is over. It's quite different if you kick your ass up to do something for others, and lose (forget) yourself in it. I don't know how to explain it better, but it was pretty practical for me. I just forced myself to get up, showered, fetched my cousin and accompanied her to find boarding house. A little thing we do for other without expecting any benefit in return. Then I forgot about all the lousy feeling and gradually felt better.

So, when you feel lousy, just stop thinking about it and start doing something not for yourself. Well it was just my one trial (or one consciously observed?) and perhaps what I did was very trivial anyway, so how can I propose this hypothesis already? Well, I really don't know, if you want to know the truth (let's start the Holden time now:-P). But, like Holden himself for example, he felt lousy most of the time, but then his turning point started from the time he stopped thinking about himself and did nice things for her little sister Phoebe**. So, it's about love (not necessarily romance) all over again.

Then when I realized this I started to think how people who never feel like they need to do anything for others without expecting return overcome their stresses, or where do they get their nice feelings from. And also, whether or not this doing things for others to feel nice about oneself should not also be categorized as selfishness. I don't really understand this myself, but sometimes it's wise not to over-analyze things either I think:-p

*supposedly it was my mental notes for my elusive tranquility blog which is about to be relocated but the whereabouts until now is still indeterminable
**Holden and Phoebe Caulfield are main characters in The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger I just finished reading