| “We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.” – John F. Kennedy, in his Presidential nomination acceptance speech |
 A pic I grabbed in a walkthrough of my front yard. |
| Good morning! I am Hugh Hollowell, and this is Life is So Beautiful, a newsletter about finding the beautiful when it’s hard to – and maybe especially when it’s hard to.Being a human who lives with depression has its moments, and right now, I’m fighting through one of them. I mean, I’m OK, lest the calls and texts start from all the people who love me. If I were in any danger, I would let you know. I’m not. I’m just depressed. This is what life is like for me. For the most part, I am highly functioning. A few years ago I wrote and published this here newsletter (under it’s previous title) for a whole summer while in the deepest depths of depression I have ever known. I once knew a man who lived in an abandoned house, and he explained to me that when housed people find out about his circumstances, they say things about how horrible it must be, and how they could never do what he does, and so on, and he said that what they are doing is imagining if they were snatched from their comfortable house and on day 1, were given his current life. “But that isn’t how it works,” he said. “I evolved to live this life, and so while I wish some things were different, it isn’t horrible for me. It just feels like Thursday.” So being depressed is not, for the most part, horrible for me. It just feels like Thursday. I evolved to live this sort of life, and while I wish things were different, I also wish I could use that transporter thing they have in Star Trek. Since neither are likely to happen any time soon, I have had to learn how to manage – to be a functioning person while also being clinically depressed most of the time. One of the ways I do that is to actively search for evidence that my reality isn’t all there is. As dark as it is in my head, there are flowers blooming, babies being born, people falling in love, and the sun rises every damn day. I’m not sure why I felt led to share this today, other than to point out that it seems like, in this pandemic haunted world in which we now live, some of y’all are in dark places too, some of you for the first time. And while I don’t know what it is like to be you, I do want to let you know that it is important to realize that your reality is not the only reality, and the world is still a beautiful place and worth fighting for, and that sometimes the best you can do is to search for the evidence of the beauty you cannot see, and then rest in it until the darkness passes. And, for me at least, it always passes. Sometimes it takes an hour or two, and other times it takes 7 months. And sometimes it just goes from a 9 to a 7, and we call that a victory and decide to take a shower to celebrate. I hope you are taking care of yourself the best you can. I hope you get some time in nature every day. And more than anything, I hope you feel loved. And if it gets too dark where you are, and you need a guide, hit me up. It may be your first visit, but I live here, and I am happy to show you around. Five beautiful things I needed this: David Byrne and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus singing One Fine Day. A few weeks ago I linked to Kevin Kelly’s 68 pieces of advice on his 68th birthday. He recently reshared them by video, and somehow, I like it even more than the written list. I, to my shame, learned about Nina Simone from movies – her songs were part of the movie Point of No Return, and while I liked the movie, I fell in love with Nina Simone. Here is an animation of her singing – almost chanting, really, Color is a Beautiful Thing, and if you are not singing along by the end, are you even alive? If coloring is your thing, many museums have released coloring sheets from their archives. I mean, there are thousands of pages here. This photoshoot of a couple in Japan’s Nara Park, under the cherry blossoms, that got photobombed by deer is the sort of content we need in this world. * * * Well, that is it for this week. I hope you have a great week, and that your life is filled with beautiful things. If you see something beautiful this week, I hope you will let me know about it, and if one of my five I shared today struck you in a special way, I hope you will let me know about that, too. If you want to support this project, you can sign up to be a Patron or buy me a book or forward this email to your friends. And if someone did forward this to you, you can get your own subscription here. Take care of yourself. And each other.  Hugh Hollowell JrPublisher |