I’ve been creatively stuck for over a year. I had been running on fumes for years before.

I have never been diagnosed with clinical depression. But I have regularly suffering long bouts of anxiety and general low mood, which I consider a form of chronic discouragement. All such things exist on a spectrum. Without being able to confidently identify a faulty mechanism in the nervous system, all such evaluations are arbitrary, if not purely subjective. But I am worse than unhappy, if not in complete despair. I don’t want to die, but I do enjoy the thought of freedom from this burden.

I am certainly sad. Not constantly, but regularly. Or perhaps it is constant, but more of an undercurrent. It feels as though something is ending, and that there will be nothing to follow it. Whatever “it” is, it’s actual end is not certain. Even if it were, it would be a long time from now, beyond my own life span. Perhaps it’s less that nothing will follow as I cannot imagine what it will be that comes next, and so I am left out. I am a vestigial organ, in an obsolete body.

I am acutely conscious of the fact that all of these thoughts and feelings are subjective, interpretive, and perhaps, yes, a result of some internal neuro-chemical dysfunction. It is like so many things, however: one can understand—or at lest intuit—how a thing might work, without necessarily having the tools to repair it. Introspection is an unreliable guide, at the best of times. The thing that is observing is the thing observed, and the thing is faulty. It cannot observe or diagnose.

Except that isn’t completely true. The thing—one’s mind and brain—is hardly monolithic. Different areas work to some degree independently. Though the boundaries are invisible, or at least obscured.

What is a faulty mind? There is no objective measure. There is only desire and frustration, amplified by comparision with others, who are mostly phantoms. We cannot know what we really seek, other than relief from dark emotions. We seek escape from pain: fear, uncertainty, self-doubt, indecision, failure, aimlessness, pointlessness, exhaustion. We hope that this or that experience, this or that relationship, this or that achievement or accomplishment, this or that reward, will dispel the darkness and fill us with hope, light, confidence, optimism, joy. But we do not know. We cannot know.

We are dust motes floating aimlessly, on invisible currents of air, sometimes drifting into a beam of sunlight, but mostly swept under the furniture, or lost in the carpet. There is no action plan for harnessing the fickle drafts which enter through the cracks in the walls. Some other entity may open or close windows and doors, but we don’t know them. Nor do they know us, nor have any clue how their actions might impact our experiences. We have no control and neither do they.

We have our experiences, and we respond. If we see good triumph over evil, we may rejoice. If we see a world—be it a biosphere, or a culture—slowing dying, there is little we can do but grieve. We might hope for a superior replacement. Though it is unlikely. And at the rate such things happen, just as unlikely that we will survive to see it. Though for many, that truth is one best suppressed, in favour of a comforting delusion of imminent exultation.

Things change. They come and go. It is only our attachment to them which pains us. We are conservative beings—irrespective of our so-called “political” affiliations. (Words like “conservative” always suffer degraded meanings in the public discourse.) To be human is to dislike too much change, unless it is narrow and focussed solely on replacing our suffering with something else. But this is a fantasy. Every change implies unexpected loss, and brings unwanted discomfort.

But what is life, without attachment? Quiet observation? Stoic passivity? Maybe. There is always dispassion. All things are equal. Death is merely change. What survives are principles, laws of nature, mathematical constructs expressed in matter and energy.

Why love mortal flesh, whether it be a person, a tree, or a building? Is not wisdom the ability to see what is behind those manifestations? To recognize the deep, enduring forces which shape matter into its various temporary forms, only to dismantle them and reform them into something new, endlessly, until the universe itself turns quiet, before yet another explosion of new energy wipes the slate and starts the process anew?

But these forces do not love us back. We are only transient distractions. They make us, and then they unmake us, before we are ready to go. They shake the ground, set the world ablaze, or drown it, tear down every touchpoint, grind down every landmark, and hurl us into tempestuous seas.

Who can think amidst such cacophony? The mind reels, the heart quails, the stomach churns. Is anything worse than that queasiness? One might as well curl up in a ball, sink into oblivion. Even if the destruction is not yet upon us, the threat looms impossibly larg. How can one get anything done? How can one find peace in a maelstrom?