After it occurred to me that I have a Jewish obligation not to be unhappy, it occurred to me that I also have an obligation to my children not to be unhappy, but rather to be happy, in order to serve as a proper model to them. Children may imitate happiness or unhappiness just as they imitate other aspects of their parents. I think that by pretending not to be depressed I had avoided giving them a model of unhappiness. (This is the one part of our relationship in which I have falsified and play- acted, rather than being openly and truthfully myself.) As they would have gotten older they would, however, have seen through this play-acting.

And like the happy ending of a fairy tale I promptly became undepressed and have (mostly) stayed undepressed. It was a matter of pitting one value against another. On the one side was the value of trying with all my strength, and damn the personal consequences, to create something of social value. On the other side was the value that I derived from Judaism: life is the highest value, and all have an obligation to cherish life in others and in oneself; to allow oneself to be depressed is a violation of this religious injunction. (I also got some help from the sage Hillel's injunction. "One may not neglect the work, but one is not required to finish it, either.")

Those, then, were the main events in my passage from black despair, then to constant gray depression, then to my present state of non-depression and happiness.

Now a few words about how my anti-depression tactics work out in practice. I have instructed myself, and have pretty much got into the habit, that whenever I say to myself "You're an idiot" because I forgot something or don't do something right or do something sloppily, I then say to myself, "Don't criticize." After I start to browbeat myself because I didn't prepare a class well enough, or I was late for an appointment with a student, or I was impatient with one of my children, I say to myself, "Lay off. Don't criticize". And after I say this, it's like feeling the yank of a reminder rope. I then feel my mood change. I smile, my stomach relaxes, and I feel a sense of relief run all through me. I also try the same kind of plan with my wife, whom I also criticize too much, and mostly for no good reason. When I start to criticize her about something--the way she cuts the bread, puts too much water on to boil, or pushes the children to get to school on time--I again say to myself "Don't criticize."

Since the start of my new life, there have been several family problems or work failures which previously would have deepened my depression from grey to black for a week or more. Now, instead of these events throwing me into deep and continuing depression, as would have happened before, each of them has caused me some pain for perhaps a day. Then after doing something active to deal with the event--such as trying to improve the situation, or writing a letter blowing my top at the responsible person (usually not mailed)--I have been able to forget the matter, and to leave behind the pain caused by it. That is, I'm now able to get over these unpleasantness fairly easily. And taken together, this means that I enjoy most of my days. When I wake up--which has always been the hardest time for me, as for many depressives--I'm able to draw a mental picture of the oncoming day which seems reasonably free of events that I'd have to criticize myself for, such as not working hard enough. I look forward to days mostly of freedom and tolerable pressures and burdens. I can tell myself that if I really don't want to do all the things that are more-or-less scheduled for that day, I have the right not to do a fair number of them. In that way I can prevent much of the dread I used to have when looking forward to duty-filled days with no sense of coming pleasure.

That ends the description of my life written just before and soon after my release from depression. Here are a few reports on my progress later on, as they were written at the time:

March 26, l976
It is almost a year from the time my new life began. Inscribing the date makes me think with pleasure that tomorrow is my youngest son's birthday, and that gives me a joyful apprehension of life such as I never had before April of 1975. I am able to smile, close my eyes, feel melting tears and inner pleasure when I think--as I did just now--of one of the children's birthdays.

I am, by now, less often ecstatic with my new joy of living than I was at the beginning of this new life. Partly that may be due to getting used to my new life without depression, and accepting it as permanent. It may also be partly because I'm no longer in Jerusalem. But still I have these ecstatically-joyful skipping-and-leaping feelings probably more often than most people who have never been severely depressed for a long time. One has to have experienced pain for a long time to be able to be wildly joyful just from noticing the absence of pain.

January 16, l977
Soon it will be two years since I decided to get rid of depression, and did so. There still is a constant running skirmish between me and the wolf that I know still waits for me outside the door. But aside from a two-week period that followed an accumulation of professional problems, when my spirits were sufficiently low that I worried I was relapsing into permanent depression, I have been undepressed. Life is worth living, for my own sake as well as for my family's sake. That's a lot.

June 18, l978
No news is often good news. I've hit some bumps in the past three years, but I've recovered each time. Now I think of myself like a buoyant swimmer. A wave can force me below the surface, but my specific gravity is less than that of water, and eventually I'll float back up after each ducking.

I remember the years when, except for stretches during hours when I was writing, not fifteen minutes of a day would pass without my reminding myself how worthless I am--how useless, unsuccessful, ridiculous, presumptuous, incompetent, immoral, I am in my work, family life and community life. I used to make an excellent argument for my worthlessness, drawing on a wide variety of evidence, and constructing a watertight case.