Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Part 6A, Part 6B, Part 7A, Part 7B
Part 8A, Part 8B
A Worm in the Heart
Sorrow has many names: distress, anguish, grief, sadness, melancholy, depression, despair. Sometimes sorrow is called despondency, although the majority of Holy Fathers separate these two passions. We’ll talk about why a little further on. Nowadays, sorrow is most often called depression. Psychiatrists and psychotherapists call depression and anxiety (which is also a manifestation of depression) the cancer of the twenty-first century, the plague of our times. And although some passions have reached unprecedented limits in the modern world, sorrow, despair, and losing the meaning of life have become a real epidemic. St. Nilus of Sinai calls sorrow “a worm in the heart.” This passion, like cancer, eats away at a man from within and can bring him to complete exhaustion (and sometimes even to death) if he doesn’t start fighting it.
Like any other passion, sorrow has a completely natural origin. Grief, suffering, mourning, weeping are the normal emotional reactions to certain difficult circumstances in life. For example, when a loved one dies, there are few who would be neutral or indifferent. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself wept when He reached the tomb of His friend Lazarus. He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled. And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him! (Jn. 11:33–36).
We can’t remain indifferent to severe shocks. Our emotions help us, firstly, to endure stress, and secondly, to mobilize our forces to deal with difficulties, to propel us to take some actions. But it’s bad when emotions get the better of us. When we enter a prolonged state of sorrow, we’re not far from depression. What is the passion of sorrow, depression? It’s a prolonged, painful state of soul. Sorrow becomes an addiction; we start to serve it and like any idol, it requires sacrifice. A man who was in a state of depression and managed to overcome it with God’s help remembers his past like a horrible nightmare. Everything that bothered him then and seemed like such a monstrous problem seems absurd and ridiculous later. And generally speaking, sorrow is a mild form of madness; a depressed man is incapable of properly assessing the circumstances of life, others, and himself.
What kinds of thoughts do those suffering from sorrow typically have swirling around in their heads? “Everything’s horrible, there’s nothing good in my life; no one loves me, no one understands me; my life has no meaning.” And of course, they can’t do without some self-flagellation: “I’m the most wretched; I’m a loser; I’m a stupid, worthless person; I bring people nothing but suffering.” With all these emotional states, the most troubling and absurd thing is the categoricalness of the judgments: everything, nothing, no one, the most, and so on. It’s clear to any healthy, sane person who isn’t in a state of prolonged depression that not everything can be bad. It’s absurd, it’s nonsense. Everyone has opportunities for life and happiness. It’s just that a depressed person stubbornly doesn’t want to notice this. Surely, he has his health (to one degree or another), arms, legs, a head, senses, some kind of work, skills, abilities, loved ones, relatives and friends, and that means he has the opportunity to love and be loved. Anyone can understand this.
It’s as clear as two plus two: For a man suffering from sorrow, it’s not his reason speaking, but something else. What? His passion, which has taken over his soul and consciousness. But recall that passions aren’t a possession or property of the soul. They come from outside—we simply let them into our soul. Is it clear now who whispers these thoughts to us about our life being meaningless and us being complete failures? The demon of sorrow. And we dutifully listen to him, taking his “messages” as our own thoughts.
Here we should recall how to fight with bad thoughts, which we already discussed in the article on battling the thoughts. The principle is the same: Don’t consider them your own and don’t let them into the house of your soul. And if they’re already in, sweep them out and quickly put other tenants in their place—that is, pure, good thoughts. The danger of sorrow—depression—is that it’s a passion, which means it acts like any of the other eight passions. On the one hand, it torments a man (remember, passions means suffering), and on the other hand, it brings many pleasant feelings, otherwise no one would fall for the devil’s hook. Oddly enough, the man who suffers from sorrow also somehow likes the sweet captivity of passion. “Nothing is so intoxicating as the wine of suffering!” writes Balzac.
Thus, it’s very hard to emerge from this state, which is why the consolations of loved ones work so poorly. The person desires not healing, but the gratifying feelings found in consolations and self-pity, while not wanting to be consoled at all. Sorrow can indeed intoxicate like wine, like a drug, and being in this warm, comfortable swamp is pleasant for the depressive; although, of course, such a state brings suffering and leads a man to self-destruction. Moreover, I repeat, it’s not easy to emerge from sorrow; it’s work, and for some it’s easier to drift with the waves. That’s why very often lazy people who are unaccustomed to work suffer from depression and melancholy.
Types of Sorrow
Sorrow, of course, doesn’t appear from out of thin air. Let’s look at the main causes of this passion. We’ve already said more than once that a passion can arise from its predecessor. Sorrow is preceded by anger, which means it can cause depression. Why? Let’s remember how we feel after an argument, after an irritated confrontation. We’re visited by a feeling of shame, emptiness, often despondency; we’re ashamed of our sharpness and lack of restraint. It happens that anger breeds resentment and irritates our pride; we can’t forgive for a long time, and this feeling of irritation, resentment, and vindictiveness leads to sadness, to a gloomy mood. It’s not uncommon to meet people who think that everyone around them owes them something and everyone’s guilty of something. But it should be the opposite for an Orthodox man: No one owes me—I owe everyone else; no one’s to blame for my troubles—I’m to blame for my own problems. When a man lives by this principle, it’s easy for him to cope with despondency; he’ll see how his life and relationships with others improve. Thinking that everyone owes us something and that everyone else is to blame is typical failure psychology.
Sorrow or depression is a sickness of neurotic people, that is, those who are imbalanced, not in control of themselves. With such people, a period of excitement, elation, an emotional surge, sometimes anger and irritation, is replaced by a period of melancholy, apathy, and despondency.
But anger, imbalance, neurasthenia—this is only one of the causes of depression. Prolonged sadness can be caused by difficult circumstances, often by the death of a loved one, a sickness, or other some other shock. Depression can also be hereditary if a depressed man’s parents suffered from neurasthenia or melancholy. But I must say that heredity isn’t an insurmountable factor here; you just need to know this, because forewarned is forearmed. Although sorrow can be caused by some kind of grief or affliction, difficult events aren’t causes of sorrow—they only provoke it. The cause is always in the person himself, in how he perceives life’s events. Because it’s an established fact that depression doesn’t depend on circumstances and our environment—its cause is always not external, but internal. Statistical evidence points to this. The highest percentage of depression and suicide isn’t in poor third-world countries, but in the most developed and rich countries, where there is a very high standard of living and people want for nothing. One in five of the richest people on the planet suffer from depression. And the most amazing thing is that there are almost no suicides among beggars and the homeless, though it would seem they have the kind of life where they might think, “I might as well off myself!”
Place Your Hope in God
Why is the passion of sorrow, anxiety, and worry so widespread in the modern world? Because of the decline of faith. The West is rapidly losing faith; Europe has already declared itself post-Christian. Unfortunately, there’s also a decline in interest in the Church in our country too. The upsurge and influx of people to churches that we saw in the 1990s is no longer there—a period of cooling has begun. Of course, the majority call themselves believers, but what do they believe in? In the year of the goat, the rooster, the pig—astrology and other occultism. Even their approach to the church building, to Orthodoxy is purely magical: which icon to place a candle in front of, which saint to pray to so everything would go well.
When a man doesn’t have true faith in God, that there shall not an hair of [his] head perish (Lk. 21:18) without the will of God, then anxiety and worry appear in his heart, and this is the beginning of depression. He starts to be afraid of everything and thinks: “What will happen to me tomorrow? What if I get sick? How can I live on my pension? What if I get killed? They show such horrible things on TV. What if I lose my job and starve to death? And then there’s the economic crisis.” Due to fear and anxiety, people are afraid of trusting each other, starting families, having babies. For example, a believer knows very well that if he wanted to have many children, the Lord would never leave them naked and hungry. If you help others, you’ll never be left without a piece of bread yourself—this is a law of the spiritual life.
Another manifestation of lack of faith is the loss of the meaning of life, and this is precisely what underlies depression. A Christian always has a reason to live—to love God and others. A believer knows that God will never abandon him, that with God he’s not one-on-one with trouble. As one Orthodox rock musician sings: “With God, it’s safer to live. With God, it’s easier to die.” But for a modern man of little faith, life is fearful and death is just the end! Thus, sorrow and depression can only be dealt with by placing our hope in the Lord, by entrusting our sorrows and problems to him, entreating His help and support. Our anxiety for the future, the present, and for our children (we also worry about them a lot) must be placed on God: Cast thy care upon the Lord, and He will nourish thee (Ps. 54:25). Then it will become much easier to cope with anxiety and sorrow.
Zest for Life
Also connected with a decline in faith is the depressed person’s loss of interest in life. He no longer rejoices in anything, he values nothing, and he pays little attention to anything. But life, in all its forms, is God’s most important gift to man, and it’s a great sin to have this attitude about it. A man will be happy only when he himself wants it, when he starts enjoying life. Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you (1 Thess. 5:16–18). Specifically, give thanks. Gratitude to God teaches us to value the gifts of life. Only that which is valued brings joy and happiness. One priest advised his spiritual children to make a list of what to thank God for every day, with at least fifty points. Another batiushka went to see Elder Nikolai Guryanov on Zalit Island for advice. He came with some kind of sorrow, and after listening to him, Fr. Nikolai said, “Rejoice!” The priest thought, “What’s there to rejoice about?” And Fr. Nikolai continued, “Rejoice that you were born; rejoice that you were baptized; rejoice that you’re Orthodox; rejoice that you’re still alive!”
For those who have fallen into sorrow, who have lost joy and a zest for life, it’s advisable to approach each day attentively. Whatever you do, do it with attention and meaning. Try to see something good and pleasant in everything, and learn to enjoy even the smallest joy. The Apostle Paul says: Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). That is, do everything for the salvation of your soul, glorifying and thanking God. For example, eating food. Before eating, we pray that God would send us our “daily bread” and we eat with gratitude to the Creator—not just stuffing food into our gullets, but eating with joy, conscious that it’s a gift from God. Solzhenitsyn has a description of how a gulag prisoner eats lunch. How he relishes and delights in it! The food he’s eating would probably make us vomit. But for a prisoner this food is a great joy. So he eats this gruel, joyfully consumes his ration of black bread, unhurriedly, savoring every note of flavor on his tongue, and scraping his bowl clean with the last piece. Then he remembers that he still has another piece for the evening, hidden under his mattress. And indeed, a poor man deprived of many pleasures can derive much more joy from life than a man who has all earthly goods.
When I was in seminary, and then the theological academy, the seminarians lived under quite barrack-like conditions: a dormitory, rooms for twenty-plus people, studies, work, evening classes, evening inspection, lights out, and wake-up call. And so on for four years for some, and eight years for others (if they also went to the academy). I remember I always wanted two things: to sleep and eat. And neither before nor after seminary have I ever gotten so much pleasure from the simplest thing: sleeping, eating, going out for a walk. I remember how we’d prepare for sleep, slowly fluff our pillows, wrap ourselves up in our blankets and... fall into a deep sleep until wake-up call. And being on cafeteria duty! I still remember how one time, after work, some other students and I poured some condensed milk into a big bowl and dipped our bread in it.
A man who wants to be delivered from sorrow has to learn how to see meaning and joy in every day, hour, and minute of life. When you go for a walk, try to notice everything and make observations; when you’re talking with someone, try to see something good in the other person, something to learn. When you read a book, don’t just “devour the pages,” but reflect upon it, take notes, and then analyze it. Thus our lives will gain meaning and wholeness. It’s very good if you really like your work, if it satisfies and captivates you. But even if you don’t have work like that yet, any task can be done with joy if you learn to see the good things about it. Even simple work like cleaning or washing dishes can be satisfying and pleasant if it’s done well and conscientiously.
