UnbornTao

The results I was getting were about 'intense pulse light.' Good to know, but I clearly don't watch it. Football (soccer) is more my thing.

With my mouth. Vegetables stir-fried, generally, and usually as a side dish. Soups, salads, purées, too. I used to add a handful of spinach to a blueberry smoothie, but it's been a while since I've done that. I often get precooked legumes (except lentils) and in a separate pan or pot add some spices, salt, and garlic, stir-fry some veggies (usually carrots, bell peppers, and onions), tomato sauce, chilli sauce, and mix it all in. Meat, mostly fried. Chicken, pork, beef. And lately with a chopped bell pepper or onions, too.

What's that?

flameshot f.lux (Linux version no longer maintained).

Watched that yesterday. The song's not bad.

That might be. On the other hand, it can just be an emotion. Notice that we aren't talking about severity but about its source. We're not even dealing with the side effects and other accompanying factors attached to the feeling. Try to get depressed now. See what occurs in your experience. Boom. Magic. You got depressed. Now what? What's going on? How do you think you get depressed? Or angry? It's not out of nowhere but out of you. Do you think an external event has to occur to justify the existence of the emotion? An example I like to use is actors. Good actors know how to bring about the necessary feeling states to their performance. Excellent actors don't just fake their emotions but actually feel them. Sadness and apathy were brought up as different emotional states in the same category as depression. The point is that you can get depressed, happy, enthusiastic, loving, etc. To clarify what you said in your other reply: there's easily a lot of victimization around these things, where people may feel the need to give way more importance to their emotional states than they deserve - in the sense that they're taken as objectively true and real, and generated by 'the world.' This we agree on. What I'm saying is - everyone gets depressed from time to time, you included. It's not an esoteric thing. It can simply be a minor emotional upheaval, disturbance. It comes and it goes, like any other emotion. If you explore it you can get a sense of what the depression is and what it is doing - what purpose it is serving for you, since you're generating it to serve some purpose, whatever that is. Again, barring physiological malfunction of some kind.

Looking good.

If you are at a point where other family members are advising you to take them, then the wisest course of action is probably to listen to them - and to your doctor. Good luck.

I don't understand your question. Are you asking why we're having this exchange? Mostly for entertainment and interacting with others, I'd say, but hopefully it also opens some doors for people. If you mean it more generally, any activity or ability, really. We're essentially asking what skill is.

No! I'm talking about experiential understanding, not truth. And I used "not-you" as a tool to step out of one's mind to make a more fair, unbiased assessment relative to one's real understanding of some activity. It doesn't have to be a person or a group. That you're able to do it - and to the degree that you do - is the proof. Not to be confused necessarily with social validation. But if you're going to become a surgeon, say, of course that social element is an essential component in this regard.

Oh, didn't realize this had already been posted.

You can, and you do, just as you get angry. Perhaps. What does a negative future have to do with it? That's one key component. It can't occur without you imagining a future. It doesn't have to be constant. And I don't think having suicidal thoughts is necessary at all for it to exist - that's called being suicidal. It might be related to the depression but isn't necessarily the same thing. It's possible that it is a reaction to feeling depressed. And, despite what is said and thought about it, what is it for real? Some food for inquiry.

It's not necessarily about another person, or about seeking social validation, although sometimes that can be incredibly useful, and oftentimes it is required, even demanded. This discussion deals mostly within the context of abilities or fields where knowledge can be easily verified, just for the sake of the conversation. As a more abstract field, think of math, for example. If I can't drive, no amount of claiming that I directly experience and understand the activity is going to change the fact that I'm essentially lying to myself. When it comes to existential matters, boy, we can all be exceptionally good liars (mainly to ourselves) because, unless you somehow create it for yourself, there is not the same kind of feedback that tells us that we're lying to ourselves, overlooking and assuming stuff, etc. What criteria or factor 'decides' whether one is able to perform or not, and how well? One thing is clear: you are not that deciding factor. In the case of physical activities, this point shouldn't be hard to see. That's why they're used as examples to bring up a deeper principle.

The emotion itself is one thing, and the consequences or side effects of it are another. You get sad, enthusiastic, bored, and interested just as you get depressed, lonely, jealous, or apathetic. It doesn't have to be this huge dramatic thing. Have you ever felt despair at the prospect of your life, a sense that could be summarized as "What's the point? Where is my life headed?" That feeling state could loosely be called 'being depressed'. It's based on a relationship to an imagined future that is seen as negative or hopeless.

It wasn't a precise analogy. What I meant to say is that it is akin to an objective measure or tool - outside of yourself and your agenda - that demonstrates and proves the understanding. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you. The gist of it is that the knowledge is demonstrable in specific ways. And the one who gets to make that final assessment of understanding is something that is not-you - speaking metaphorically again. It's true, real, and grounded if or because it is the case, not because one thinks or claims it is. Crucial difference that can easily go over one's head.