What I’m about to say is, in all honesty, incredibly personal and pertinent to me even as I write this, so it’ll likely be quite some time before anybody even has the opportunity to read what I’m about to say. Still, I thought I ought to write it all down because, if my sixth grade math teacher is to be believed, for every person with a question or concern, there will be at least six more who’re too anxious to even raise their hands.

You might have guessed that today’s subject matter isn’t especially cheery. That’s because several months ago I picked up a book called Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, which details a writer’s experiences with an incredibly severe depression. Now, I came to this book just as a man—free of any conviction or creed—at perhaps the lowest I’ve ever felt in my life. Of course, I was initially interested because I thought that what the author, William Styron, said might shed some light on my own situation. Could it maybe hold some insight or treasure of wisdom that would help me? As human beings, we’re hopelessly attracted to “magic” cures for things, even when there aren’t any to be found.

If I’m being honest, I should have known that this book couldn’t provide what I was hoping for. No matter what extent of philosophy, theology, or whatever discipline I’ve studied has provided any consolation when I’m feeling the worst of everything. That’s because there’s a difference between knowing something and taking something to heart. I might know a great many things (or I might not), but unless those ideas really and truly sink in, they will only ever exist for me as if in an intellectual playground with no actual bearing on my life whatsoever.

That’s not to say that I didn’t get anything out of this book. Far from it! I think Styron described the experience of being depressed quite well when he explains his understanding of the philosophy of Albert Camus, who said:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Depression, Styron suggests, is like being forced to confront the question even in tortured circumstances, and so it seems that the answer is, “No, life isn’t worth living.” As someone who obviously embodies the consequences of philosophical questions, this description of depression seemed familiar to my own experience with when I’ve felt a little melancholy myself.

Still, does this matter? Does this book have anything constructive to offer? As I said, there is no magic cure, and the book make this clear early on when the author states that depression is so varied among those who have it that one man’s solution could be another man’s trap. In other words, depression is one slippery son of a bitch. In the author’s own experience, neither therapy nor medication had much impact. It was only when he was hospitalised that he felt himself start to improve, although even then there were a multitude of factors that may have made this so. The optimism his book permits us to hold isn’t to do with a singular method—many of which are just platitudes anyway—but instead the fact that most victims of depression survive it, and that the feeling will pass. Sometimes one just has to live it and wait.

In Rilke’s fourth letter to Kappus, he says precisely this: “Don’t search for answers now that cannot be given because you could not live them. And it is about living it all. Live the questions now.” There is no substitute for experiencing these things. The words and expressions of others will always fall short so long as you have no concept of the feeling itself because unless you have experienced it, I guarantee that you do not. This is true of all feelings as a matter of fact: similarly, love is one such emotion that cannot be properly understood until someone actually feels it.

I suppose if I were to offer a final word or encouragement, it would be this: know that you’re not alone, and the answer is out there if only you have the courage to live for it.