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The fundamental human mimetic drive may be to copy this explosion. We see it in children, in fireworks, in art, in pop song choruses, in orgasms. We follow those who seem to know how to get a life bursting with life..

2 primary types. Those we follow because we think they can help GET us a new life, vs those we follow because we want to BE a new kind of life. The temptation to follow the former who lead us to glory, power, and status is high. It offers you newness w/o having to change.

But how can you live a new better life if you can't give up your old one? The one you fought so hard to protect. In such a state, nothing you have will fulfill you because your hands will always be too full to catch it.

Life flows around us. You sense it. It is when things are changing all around you but you're happy, like a roller coaster ride.

Depression is like hiding away from change under a dark blanket. It's lonely under the blanket and too panic inducing outside of it. It's difficult to help them because both too-little change and too-much change are stressful.

An advantage is that depressed people have a more fine tuned radar for finding the "middle" path. Their pain is attuned to extremes at the both ends. By avoiding pain, they balance themselves.

Depression is a failed rite of passage. You weren't able to kill the wolf in and murder your way into your right to life that stares down the void of existential nothingness. Depression is to let you know that that challenge is still waiting.

The way through depression is on over that tightrope, that rite of passage where death is real. You have to face a life or death situation. You have to make a choice to live and fight for it. (Like SAW survivors being thankful)