Simple conversations with strangers can be profound. I had such a conversation with a 40’ish something year old man today. I’d seen him before at my local workout facility; thin, hair graying, brown eyes tired but engaging. He usually smiled while emptying trashcans and cleaning the gym showers. I had never talked to him.
He walked up to me, smiling. “You’re working out hard today!”, he said, noticing my shirt sticking to my skin via a thick coating of sweat.
“I work like this to keep my mind good”, I told him. “I get down sometimes. Moving my body helps.”
He paused, smile dropping, and looked deeply into my eyes. “Man, I’ve been real down, depressed. Everything goes bad, I had to fight for custody of my kids, I got in trouble with the law and incarcerated. I stayed out in my garage drinking”. He looked at the ground, then back at me. “I’m better now, though”.
“How did you get better?”
“You just gotta throw your problems up to God. Let Him handle it. Nothing we can do, anyway. And I push those bad thoughts away when I get ‘em.”
“Do you ever think,” I asked him, “that God talks through you, and you through me? All of us when we talk to each other?”
“Yes, God is within us all” he said slowly with a smile.
We parted ways, him to continue working and me to finish exercising.
One of the worst parts about depression is the feeling of isolation, like no one understands or identifies with what you’re going through. Like you’re going it alone.
Openly sharing my experiences and carefully hearing others’ helps me realize that we’re not alone and all of us, no matter our context, are sharing the great experience of life, with all of its ups and downs, moments of doubt and leaps of faith.
The Ruse 