Builds Upon: Survival in the Void

One of the most powerful remedies for feelings of depression, loneliness, and rejection is a hobby or discipline that commands your intimate attention.  As a kid I loved insects and all kinds of small life.  I gained an appreciation early on by dissecting bugs from the garden under a stereoscope.  I realized just how intricate and otherworldly they were.  I had already seen how most people passed them over, only noticing them long enough to kill them.

Years later during the deep black states of mind of my teen years, I learned that by doing something intimate and intricate with my surrounding environment could revive me.

Once as I high school junior, I was crushingly depressed and lonely.  It was a depressingly sunny cheerful day near the end of the school year when everyone else seemed so happy and unified.

I turned my attention as I had done since childhood to the leaves and branches of various shrubs.  I knew well how to search.  I soon noticed small bumps that I instantly recognized as plant galls.  Plant galls, I well knew were the nurseries of the larva of tiny parasitic wasps.

I broke off some galls and snuck into the biology lab.  No one was there but me.

I delicately cut open the galls and extracted the larvae for viewing under the microscope.

My state of mind was much improved when I was done.

Something, any small thing that makes you appreciate the enormous intricate beauty of our universe will save you.

Any small thing at all will work.  Sometimes all I had to do to ground myself was simply to stop and watch the afternoon shadows of swaying tree branches, a single autumn leaf drift all the way from its branch to the ground, a ray of sunlight suddenly shoot through a high window as the sun rose just the tiniest bit higher.  The key is shifting one’s attention from the social plane and becoming aware of the vast, chaotic extra-social reality that surrounds us.  Eventually that outer Void becomes home.