No... I am not going all "emo" on you guys and gals.
I want to argue that depression should not be feared and is a healthy, normal, natural thing. In fact, I would say that depression came to be as an evolutionary tactic; this feeling of emptiness is actually a byproduct of growth and change. Growth and change, my friends, are good things.
Let's look at one of the quintessential times of change for the human being... what we have come to know as the mid-life crisis. Usually defined as a phase happening somewhere in your 30s or 40s, a person acknowledges his finite time upon this earth, and is overwhelmed with the thoughts of whether his choices for his life were right or wrong. He comes to terms with his limits and regrets, and tries to have one last hurrah to justify or make up for all the time he feels he has wasted thus far. This transition is accompanied with denial and/or sadness.
This is something we just can't help, as well as any other time of depression. It's one of the examples that leads us to say that we can't control how we feel, and we have a hard time describing the exact cause of these feelings; and if we could easily explain the cause of the problem, it would seem to be just as easy to find the solution.
Ultimately, depression is a sign of disconnect between where we are at and where we want to be in our lives. The hardest part is deciding where we want to be while we get lost along the way... or maybe deciding whether there should be an end goal in the first place.
