Learned Depression: society at risk.

I fear that we are raising children that are encouraged into depression.  I fear this for myself and I fear this for our society.  This subject needs to be an entire book by itself.  By showing extra care when sadness occurs and ambivalence or discomfort for normal or excited behavior we are shaping them to be a child/adult drawn to sadness.  This is pure classical conditioning.  Give them more attention when they are sad or hurt of suffering than when they are excited or goofy or happy…and that is a simple recipe for adult depression. 

How appropriate is it that we, as a society, have difficulty being excited?  When you are standing there in a crowd and you see someone being a complete goof onstage how smug do you feel?  How smug do I feel?  There is such criticism when Tom Cruise jumps on the couch over his new girl katie…or when Howard Dean became too giddy on stage.  I felt like I was the only one saying, who gives a fuck…why shouldn’t he be excited?  Hell, if a thousand people were chanting my name I’d rip my clothes off and bodysurf.  Why should the embellishment of excitement matter.   Why isn’t it ok to entertain laughter and excitability?  There will always be a reason that it is a bad idea…you will always find a critic with a point somewhere.  The problem is that the ‘don’t make decisions on emotions’ rule has not been challenged and has turned into an entire entourage of new beliefs including, but not limited to ‘don’t show emotions.’  The truth is, EVERY decision is made with emotions.  I’d say 90% of our decisions are ‘thoughtfully justified’ with raw emotion…and the rest are still affected.  Business decisions, financial decisions, ALL decisions.  And is that such a bad thing?  No one is putting a blessing on stupid choices here, but aren’t most choices realized as stupid AFTER the fact?  It’s easy to be right when the wrong has surfaced.  Enough of this discounting of how you FEEL about it. 

We live in a high-brow/low life world.  Only the crazies have any fun any more while we make all the ‘right’ decisions based upon estimated biased statistics that apply to the general masses (not individual me).

So when my daughter wanted to dance yesterday, I danced.

When she wanted to build a fort, I built a fort.

When she showed me her new dance move in the front yard…I showed her mine.

And those who said Tom Cruise was being stupid and childish?  Ok.  Fine.  He was being stupid and childish.  I bet it felt GREAT.