Serendipidy-do-da

After last week, I really wanted to write something funny.  I can't explain it, but nothing funny happened this week.  I had tons of material.  The Bent Tree Singles at my house.  There's a laugh a minute.  I worked at my volunteer job two days and met some very unusual folks not to mention the regulars.  My ex husband called and said he loved me and he might just show up one day on my door step and say "I'm back".  Nothing. Nada.  So I had to look around me and try to find out what this week was about.  This is what I realized. I got an unexpected gift. The definition of serendipity is to discover things unexpected.  The old silver lining kind of discovery. The key word here is unexpected.  I am not a big believer in the value of television.  But this week within the limited framework of television land I made a serendipitous discovery.  Over the course of the last few days I watched as Scotty McCreery became America's Idol. I saw Oprah say goodbye after 25 years of trying to solve all our problems.  I watched John Rich win Celebrity Apprentice and talk about it on Ellen.  I watched the Blues Brothers for the l00th time.  During those hours I spent mindlessly watching these shows, shows which have become icons for America's Pop Culture, I discovered what is wrong with our country. Its depression.  I bet during those few shows and the six o'clock news I saw 20 or more commercials for anti-depressants.  And also if you watch the commercials,  you realize that the people who are depressed have been that way for so long that their medication no longer is working and they are looking for new medications to take. I guess I really noticed this because I also had a few conversations with people whom I love and care about who are depressed. I have always thought of depression as sadness but it hit me that depression isn't sadness,  although the people effected are definitely sad.  What they really seem to be suffering from is disappointment.  Underlying that sadness there's a sense within those people that their lives have not gone as they expected. Again there's a form of that word, expected. We have such high expectations in our culture.  We expect to be a certain way, have things happen a certain way, look a certain way.  And yet it almost never turns out as we expect.  Life throws us a tornado, or a curve or worst, we die in one like the motorcyclist last week. But the good thing, the true serendipitous discovery was not that we are plagued with depression.  Instead it was that there is a cure for it.  In watching the stupid TV this week, I heard over and over that you can not be depressed and grateful at the same time. It won't work.  Even the Blue Brothers were trying to do something for someone else.  The news was even covering how people all over the place are helping each other out due to the tornadoes. And they were counting their blessings to be alive and with their families. If you are counting your blessings, you don't have time to dwell on your disappointments.  I am not a psychiatrist, I may need one, but I not one.  But if I can figure this out, why aren't others looking at it and saying it.  Maybe they are and I just haven't been listening.   This week I did.  And I am counting that as a blessing.