other people's thoughts

Just a few things on depression and melancholy... by other people, have heard from other sources such as new Scientist about depressive realism.....

Depressive realism. It has been documented that depressive people have a more accurate conception than do optimists of their abilities and limits. The depressive possesses a clarity which can’t be clouded by comforting lies. It may be that strenuous ‘positive thinking’ has a beneficial effect on the immune system and your earning capacity but what’s the point of being well if It’s based on an illusion? Besides, such aerobics of the morale are exhausting.
Your positive thinker may do well in suburbia but I’d rather be with a lucid depressive in the Arctic, where survival depends on precision and not fooling yourself about your chances on the ice.
……….
Cognitive therapists focus on getting patients to see the glass as half-full rather than half empty. Being positive has become rather a fetish. A more radical tactic would be to abolish the need for evaluation at all and just accept the glass as it is, whether it be cracked or brimming.
Gwyneth Lewis, Sunbathing in the Rain

Why should you want to exclude any anxiety, any grief, any melancholy from your life, since you do not know what it is that these conditions are accomplishing in you?
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet tr. Joan M. Burnham