This 1973 Penny

This madness/This sadness/it's everyone's own/So don't expect/no compassion/unless you're givin' some. -John Bellows

I've been thinking a lot lately (and actually since I first heard it) about that line from the John Bellows song. I think it's about how people tend to personalize their shortcomings.

They talk about how they "were" or "am" depressed. They say things like:

"I was depressed." "I didn't have any energy." "I was stressed."

Instead of:

I was coping with depression." "I was suffering from exhaustion." "I was dealing with stress."

In this way they change it from being a universal condition, that could happen to anybody, to their own personal sin.

They think this is "their" problem. This is the explanation for why they haven't done what they've wanted or needed to do. Because of some weird genetic thing that is wrong with them.

It's dangerous because they don't see it as a temporary condition (for the most part). They consider it to be their reality. To them it's who they are, and jot just what they are going through.

I've thought a lot lately about everything that's prevented me from doing what I've wanted to do. I've had health problems. Emotional problems. Problems with unreliable luck. I don't think any of it has stopped me. But it has managed to both slow me down and greatly distract me

There are things I know I could do (like updating this site), that don't get done. And that got me thinking about this 1973 penny.

I pick up pennies all the time. I have since I was a little boy. I took Ben Franklin's "A penny saved is a penny earned" to heart. I'll actually go out of my way to pick up any penny I see.

But this one from 1973 has been sitting on my porch since the dead of Winter. It's dusted over with rock salt that's been colored in by snow and rain.

I've passed it absolutely every time I've come into the house since last November, and I've probably regarded it 80% of the time

But nothing could get me to pick up this 1973 penny. I never had enough time. I was always running late. Sometimes I was too tired. Sometimes I'd had a bad day. Sometimes things were going so well that I couldn't be bothered with it. I could've flicked it up in the blink of an eye (I'd just come from my uncle's place where I'd caught a vague glimpse of a penny in the street and spent three minutes tracking it down and retrieving it)

But I just couldn't do it.

I realized it wasn't "my" problem. It wasn't "my depression," "my stress," or "my sadness" that was preventing me from picking up this penny.

It's everyone's problem.

Like John Bellow's suggested: It's the human condition. As long as you personalize it, you're never going to win. You may be dealing with more or less depression than the next person. But it isn't your depression you're dealing with. You're dealing with a condition that affects everyone on some level or another.

So today I picked up the penny... in half a second. Held it in my palm and it's sitting on the piano stool now. I wrote a story about it. I'm feeling better with every word. I updated my website. I'm still worried about problems at work. But I'm dealing with things. Nothing so grand nor abstract as success or failure, those things that are across the lawn, dawn the block, and over the lakefront... but those things I know I can deal with that are easily within reach.

I'm dealing with them.

They are not me.

I suddenly don't feel so disconnected.

-David Hawkins