Why do some people who have discovered their purpose get depressed?

[tatsumaru]

I was wondering - why do some people who have discovered their purpose like Amy Winehouse and Anthony Bourdaine and Robin Williams etc get depressed and commit suicide anyway? Whats lacking there?

[Eph75]

Was it their purpose or their lifeboat, a way to express themselves acting as a valve to release the pressure, a coping skill if you will? Being driven doesn't have to come from a pink and fluffy place. Often the case is the opposite, a lot of creative expression stems from darkness.

[Potato People King]

Well, maybe they did not discover their life purposes in the first place, just did what worked out for them?

Even if you do discover your life purpose, if you do not know how to handle your thoughts and emotions or have serious psychological condition like bipolar disorder, you can get depressed anyway.

[Preety_India]

Because they find their life purpose but they don't find peace. 

 

 

[Nivsch]

When you find your life purpose you will fill in "high" and very unusual positive emotions.

Given that your brain and your mind want to maintain homeostasis, after couple of days/weeks it will respond in anxiety and/or depression episode to compensate.

Give it more time and it will adjust, stabilize and calm down.

Look at it as a complex bilogical system that you destabilize it and moved it away from its familiar place, and now it will oscillate for a while. Also when your brain thinks you are in a new area that can be dangerous it will react negatively at the beggining as it is rooted in your biological system which wants to survive.

Edited September 30, 2020 by Nivsch

[hyruga]

Because they have the wrong purposes.

So for example, if you have a purpose of making 1 million dollars. After 30+ years, you finally achieve it. Do you think you will be happy with 1 million? Life is more than money. So people need to find another purpose. 

Of course, in the case of some people or celebrities, they have some health issues or depression they have to deal with as well. In such cases, they have to seek help from professionals.

Edited October 1, 2020 by hyruga

[GoingHome]

This Thomas Merton quote gives hints at it. With success like the people you mention have achieved means a lot of work where they can be left with very little time to contemplate what they are really here for.

“If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success . . . If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.”.

Thomas Merton, Love and Living
 

That is why Jesus said "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God". It’s not so much about the money as the attachment to the success and also the time it takes. There are many different takes on “purpose”. There is also the ego’s purpose and God’s purpose which won’t be the same.  

[Leo Gura]

Life purpose is not an ultimate solution to the problem of meaninglessness. Only hardcore spirituality can resolve that.

[Hello from Russia]

4 hours ago, hyruga said:

Because they have the wrong purposes.

So for example, if you have a purpose of making 1 million dollars. After 30+ years, you finally achieve it. Do you think you will be happy with 1 million? Life is more than money. So people need to find another purpose. 

Of course, in the case of some people or celebrities, they have some health issues or depression they have to deal with as well. In such cases, they have to seek help from professionals.

if it took me 30 years to make 1 million dollar I would be depressed too,

Edited October 1, 2020 by Hello from Russia

[Enlightenment]

@tatsumaru For the same reason rats can get depressed