Do Something Else
"Do something else" is a code phrase between my best friend and myself. It originated from a tragic circumstance.
When my younger brother John was a teenager, a pal of his commited suicide.
In his grief, John wailed, "Why didn't he just do something else?"
My pal and I, teenagers ourselves, asked, "What do you mean?"
John said, "I mean switch schools. Learn to play the guitar. Apply to study in Greece. Ask out girls until one of them said 'yes'. Play hockey. Switch shrinks. Visit relatives in another town and see the sites. Listen to lots of music until something moved him. Go through the library until he found a book that really delighted him. Why didn't he just do something else?"
My pal grew up to be a psychologist, and she tells me that she often thinks about this plaintive statement of a 15-year-old boy.
Granted, it is simplistic, and it hardly applies to people who are desperate and disconnected enough to consider suicide.
But I've always used it for myself whenever I have suddenly realized that I am just plain miserable. What can I do that is Something Different?
Speaking for myself, I get tired of the women's magazines that tell me to take a bubble bath and have a pedicure. What is this, 1951? Shall I beg my husband Ricky Ricardo to buy me a new flowered hat, too?
I'd rather have a thick, juicy new book and the time to read it. Theatre, movies - anything having to do with the arts. Your list will be as specific to you as mine is to me.
In short, I Do Something Else.
This advice is too trivial for the severly depressed, of course, but I think it is good advice for those of us who suffer with occasional dreariness.
That John - who would have thought he had such good advice?
Now, if I could only get him to stop putting my head in a hammerlock...