The Arab Depression
All things come to those who wait, apparently.
Patience is a virtue, again, apparently.
But is it? People have been waiting patiently for the Gaddafi regime to fall in Libya for 40 years, and it was a similar situation in Egypt, and Syria. Eventually patience gives way, and generally it’s an explosive breakthrough.
I have heard lots of people through the years described as having a ‘long fuse’ these people tend to bottle everything up inside until they can’t stand any more, generally then these are the people that blow up – it always comes as a surprise and it’s generally effective but did bottling their feelings up for all that time really help?
I too have been accused of bottling things up – although I would never describe myself as patient.
I have been diagnosed as having depression, and apparently the trigger for that was that after my Father died I held back my emotions (for reasons I won’t go into here) for several years. Now I have a diagnosis of Dysthymia, essentially early onset grumpy old man.
It’s not widely talked about by anyone, and like most forms of depression it’s treatable, not curable.
Over the years since I was first told I was depressed I have had several sessions of counselling, and one rather bad experience of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in the hope that the depression would just go away, along with several different kinds of medication.
My current therapist is great, and I am currently feeling generally well.
I see on the news almost once a week that large numbers of the population ‘suffer’ from depression. Just to explain I don’t like to use the word suffer because it has connotations of victim and most of the depressives I have met are anything but victims.
Some days my depression can make me almost a zombie, not caring about anything at all including eating, cleaning my appearance. On those day’s just motivating myself to get out of bed is a struggle, I do get out of bed, and I do go to work, and everything else you have to do to be part of normal society, but the other part of those day’s is the feeling of being outside, and I don’t mean in the open air. That feeling of disconnection at its worse isn’t just from the rest of the world but from myself.
I generally score my mood everyday out of ten. The lowest it’s ever been is 1. The highest it’s been in the last 3 years is 6 or 7. I would say my current average is 4 or a 5. When I hit a 5 or above Sandie (my long suffering wife) and I have a little celebration.
So how do I get from Egypt, Syria and Libya to depression?
I can’t profess to know much about the current problems any of these countries, but I have noticed on the news the pre-occupation (understandably so) with what happens next.
Imagine, if you will, that all of these countries have been in some level of “depression” since there dictators took power. Coming out of that is going to be a long slow process. They are going to need help and guidance, but they also need to be self sufficient. They are going to be tired and exhausted, and again we should help wherever we can, and they are going to relapse, probably the most depressing statement of all, but it’s true.
But if we are going to be true allies of these countries in the future we are going to need to support them.
When we supply advice and guidance it should be without strings attached. Where there infrastructure is damaged we should offer to fix it or supply the material to do so, but this shouldn’t be tied to massive high interest loans and certainly shouldn’t only be done to forward our own agenda.
And when they relapse we should offer them a firm but guiding hand at the earliest possible moment, not an iron fist.
In my not very humble opinion the next 10-20 years in the Middle East are going to be intensely interesting as the youngsters who have seem the “Arab Spring” come into power.
