Attitude

Two frogs fell into a bowl of cream.
One had an optimistic gleam,
But the other took the gloomy view.
“We’ll drown,” he cried, and without adieu
He gave a last despairing cry,
Flung up his legs and said good-bye.

Said the other frog with a steady grin,
“I can’t get out, but I won’t give in;
I’ll just swim around till my strength is spent,
Then will I die the more content.”

Bravely he swam till it would seem
His struggles began to churn the cream.
On top of the butter at last he stopped,
And out of the bowl he gaily hopped.

What is the moral? ’Tis easily found:
If you can’t get out, keep swimming around.
(Author Unknown)

We always have a choice, even during our worst trials. We can give up or keep swimming around. While “keep swimming around” may seem overly optimistic and simplistic, it may actually be more feasible than we believe. During my longest and most frustrating episode of depression, Jeff had a poster that read, “We can’t always control the things that happen to us, but we can always control our attitudes.” It hung on our living room wall, across from the front door, right next to the entrance to the kitchen. I saw it all the time and I hated it. It stared at me and taunted me and told me I was weak because I couldn’t control my feelings. It said to me that I was doing something wrong if I was sad and angry all the time. One day I got so frustrated that I took a piece of masking tape and wrote on it in bright green permanent marker, “unless we have depression.” I stuck it on the poster beneath the words, amending it to consider my needs and my feelings. I didn’t mean to leave it there for long, but I forgot about it and still wonder how many guests saw it. I took it off one day after my visiting teachers had been to see me and the poster had been just behind me, in plain view to them. I assume they saw it, but they didn’t say anything about it, for which I was grateful. Jeff took the poster down soon after that, obviously having realized that it offended me.
I have since determined that I was wrong. I now agree with that poster. We can’t control the things that happen to us. I got depression. I hated how I felt. I hated myself at times, and I certainly hated my blackened view of the world around me. But we can control our attitudes. And I now realize that I did. Although I didn’t feel like I could relate to anyone and wondered if I would ever be able to feel the calming influence of the Holy Ghost again, something inside me said, “Just hang on, Jana. This is not you, and it’s not your fault. The gospel is still true, and you will understand all of this eventually. Just hang on.”
Some days, it was all I could do to hang on. But that was the key. Through all of it, I did hang on. I hung on with every bit of me I could muster that wasn’t plagued and haunted by the growing darkness I felt. I didn’t give up; I knew that it would end, so I kept swimming around. I knew that somehow, when people in church proclaimed that the gospel should make us happy, it was true. Even though it didn’t feel true—it felt like I was a walking contradiction of that oft-quoted promise—I knew it was. I had a foundation in the gospel that told me that all of these foreign, gray feelings I was experiencing were not the truth—they were something else entirely and they would someday fit into an overall picture of my life and an overall picture of the truth of the gospel.
Dan, 54, shares this same sentiment: “There is something inside me that tells me these dark, gloomy feelings are not real. They are a lie. In these times, I try to rely on my intellect and the glimmer of divine light that, however dim, is never entirely extinguished in any of us to push those thoughts and feelings into the background. I find that age and experience help. I now know and recognize the symptoms. I know that there is an ebb and flow to it and I know, at least on an intellectual level, that it will eventually get better. I know now that even in the midst of the thickest fog that lasts for days on end, the sunlight is still there. One just has to keep traveling until the road climbs to an elevation that escapes the fog.
“One of the best pieces of advice I ever received wasn’t intended as advice at all. It came from a woman who had recently undergone a series of very difficult trials, suffering one heartbreak after another. After hearing her story, I remarked that she seemed to be doing pretty well, considering her circumstances and I asked how she was able to cope with all the sadness in her life. She replied, ‘I just hang on and wait for it to get better.’ So it is with me and my struggles with depression. I just hang on and wait for it to get better.
“And it always does.”
We have a choice. No matter how much of our self-will seems to have been taken away by depression, we always have a choice of how our afflictions will affect us. At a time of great war and turmoil in the Book of Mormon, we are told this: “But behold, because of the exceedingly great length of the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites many had become hardened, because of the exceedingly great length of the war; and many were softened because of their afflictions, insomuch that they did humble themselves before God, even in the depth of humility” (Alma 62:41). From all appearances, the two groups of people spoken of in this verse had the same difficulties; they had relatively similar afflictions and the main cause of their sorrows was the same war. So what was the difference between those who hardened their hearts and those who humbled themselves and turned to God? I’m convinced it was attitude. The ones who turned to the Lord were the ones who remembered what was most important.
We can decide what kind of effect our trials will have on us. We can humble ourselves and turn to the Lord rather than becoming angry with Him and believing that He is not being fair. “God is always there for you to lean on. But the hardest part is that when you are depressed, mostly in the worst part of depression, i.e. suicidal, either you think God doesn’t exist, or you think that God isn’t that nice of a guy. That was part of what I went through. I began to feel so alone and so hopeless and felt like god wasn’t going to help me and that he wasn’t there, when he was all along. I just had to ask for the help and he would have poured out his help and blessings on me. But I didn’t because I was in a self inflicted downward spiral: ‘God won’t help me? Fine! I won’t ask for it.’ But God needs for us to ask for his help so he can help us. He wants so badly to be there for us, to help us when we are at out most troubled.” It took a suicide attempt for this young man to learn that lesson.
Learning the lesson takes giving up our wills and trusting in what He has in store for us. One bishop I know who learned to find his way out of depression said, “Turning over our lives to the Lord is a frightening thing to do, especially when we already feel weighed down with burdens that seem much too heavy to carry and fear what additional loads the Lord may have in store for us. But we must remember that the Lord loves us perfectly; that his path will never allow us to suffer anything needlessly, and that his way toward perfection requires the least amount of heartache and suffering. We must not, in pride, believe that we know best.” Once we recognize that the Lord is at the helm, we will be more comfortable allowing Him to steer. Even if the war is inside of us, we have the power to humble ourselves or harden ourselves.