This is a letter I wrote to a person on another depression forum. Before anyone reads this, I want to let you know that I don't mean to cause any trouble by posting this letter. I do it out of pure empathy for people who are going through similar things that I went through. I just wanted to say this because I was banned by the administrators of the other forum for posting this.

I understand what you are going through and how you feel. And I’d like to share some ideas with you that might help you navigate through this journey of life.

First, I would like to tell you a little bit about myself to give you a sense of who I am and where I’m coming from. My name is Andrew Colón and I am 21 years old. When I was 16, I started going through a deep depression that lasted until I was 20 years old. Throughout this time, I contemplated suicide very seriously. Day after day, I would try to find a reason to keep living. At the time I was selling drugs and at the same time using drugs. I was also drinking heavily. I used drugs and alcohol as a way to forget about the pain I felt. I would look at my life, the lives of my family, and the lives of other people around me and saw nothing but suffering and sadness. And I would think to myself, “Is this really all that life has to offer?” “Is this what I was put on this earth for, to suffer?” It seemed as if I was just a leaf blowing in the wind, with no purpose. I didn’t want to be another mindless person stuck in the cycle of school, work, retirement, then death. I also didn’t want to go through life being a slave to money and never really experiencing true happiness and joy. I knew there was more to life than money and materialism.

I was so depressed and angry at the world. Most days I didn’t feel like getting out of bed, and much less socializing. I was tired of putting on a fake smile and pretending that nothing was wrong. So slowly, I began alienating myself from my friends and family. It got to the point where I would go weeks without talking to anybody, not even my family. I felt completely alone and as if I didn’t belong in this world.

During this time alone I did a lot of thinking and soul searching. I would think mostly about why I felt the way I did. But one day, it occurred to me that I couldn’t be the only person that felt this way. And that maybe someone had found a way to overcome this feeling of despair. And so I began my journey of self discovery.

I began devoting my free time to finding these people and learning from them. To my surprise, I found countless people that felt very similar to the way I felt. It was actually shocking to me how similar we felt. Out of all the people I learned from, the 3 that stood out most were Alan Watts, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Lao Tzu. They completely changed the way I view myself and the way I view the world. I don’t feel angry or depressed anymore. To be honest, I feel like a new person. I am filled with happiness and I see beauty everywhere I look. I owe a lot of this to the lessons I learned from these 3 people. Some of the ideas that I am going to share with you are ideas I learned from these 3 people. And some are ideas of my own.

Before I share these ideas with you, I would like to ask you to please keep an open mind. Some of what you will read may seem abstract and esoteric. It may also go completely against the way you think. But if your mind is open, I am certain you will see it’s profound truth. And remember, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

There are many reasons for why myself and so many others feel depressed and confused. But I believe there is a root/main cause that underlies most of these reasons. And I believe it is the way we think about ourselves in relationship to the world around us. We think of ourselves as separate from the rest of the world. We feel as if we are strangers to this world. And sometimes we feel that we don't really belong here, and that us being here is a complete accident.
“I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.”
These lines of poetry are an accurate description of the way so many people feel. And because of these ideas/feelings we have about ourselves, we are constantly in a state of confusion and we wonder where exactly do we fit into all of this. This is the way I felt for a long time.

But the truth is you are not separate from the rest of the world. And you are not foreign to it. You are part of the universe just like the stars and the planets. I will now explain to you why this is true.

It should be obvious that we are part of the universe and that we are just as natural to it as the stars and the planets. But to most people it is not obvious at all. Why is that? What makes us feel so apart from everything and everyone? If you really dig deep into this question, you will come to find that the primary cause of this feeling of separation is our language. You might be asking yourself, “How can language, something that helps us communicate and share ideas, make us feel separate?” To understand the answer to this question, you must understand the nature of language.

In order to efficiently/accurately communicate, study, measure, or describe something you have to either isolate the subject from it’s surroundings or you must divide the subject into separate parts. Otherwise, whatever you are trying to communicate, study, measure, or describe becomes extremely vague and unintelligible.

I’ll give you a simple example of this. Lets pretend we live in a period of time in which modern language doesn’t exist yet and our only method of communication is very crude body language and noises. How would you attempt to communicate with me while I am standing in the middle of a crowd of people. You might start by making noises, waving your hands, and pointing your finger towards me. And if you’re lucky, I might realize that you are trying to communicate with me. But if it were a very large crowd, you would most likely not be able to communicate with me and you would end up looking like an idiot making random noises and waving. Your only option would be to walk through the large crowd until you are close enough to me. But whether the crowd is large or small, the method of communication is rather inefficient. But what if there was a sound you could make that would isolate me from the other people around me. And just by making this sound, you could almost instantly get my attention and communicate with me without having to wave your arms, point at me, or even look at me. This would be a very efficient way of communicating with me, right? Well, there is a sound that does just that. It’s called your name. So now, instead of waving, pointing, and making random noises, you can just make the noise “Andrew”, and we would be able to communicate. But in order for this noise to be efficient, it has to isolate and separate me from the crowd. If you were to say, “Hey you”, this would not be as efficient because it is too vague and I wouldn‘t know who you are trying to communicate with.

Another example of the separation language creates can be seen in the method scientists use to study and describe the subject/s they are researching. Look at the way scientists study and describe the human body. They break it down into separate systems: skeletal system, circulatory system, nervous system, digestive system, etc. They describe the human body as if it were some sort of machine with separate and independent parts.

I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I am in no way saying that language is evil and that we should get rid of it. That would be extremely foolish. There is no denying that language has allowed us to learn so much about ourselves and nature. Much of this would have been impossible to learn without the use of language. But the problem caused by language occurs when we confuse the way we communicate, study, measure, or describe the natural world with the way the natural world actually is. In the natural world there are no independent parts/things or independent events. There is no separation or isolation. Lets go back to my first example of you trying to communicate with me while I am standing in a crowd. In order to efficiently communicate with me, you have to isolate me from the other people by saying my name. So subconsciously, I begin to associate myself with this sound people use to identify me. I begin to think that I am this sound and that I am different from John, Jane, Bill, and Bob. If I were to ask somebody, “Who are you?” Without even hesitating, they would say their name. But is this really who you are? Are you really just a sound? The answer of course is NO. You are much more than the sound people use to identify you. Who you really are is much deeper and more complex than just sound. And you are not isolated from other people. If you were truly isolated and independent, you would not exist. If your mom and dad didn’t exist, you would not exist. So your existence is completely dependent on them. We all depend on one another whether we know it or not.

Now lets take a look at my second example. Scientists separate the human body into different systems so that they can accurately describe and study it. But this is not how the human body actually is. If you could look inside a human body and examine it, you will see that there are no separate or independent parts/systems. There are no divisions between the nervous system, digestive system, circulatory system, etc. They are connected and interdependent. If one stops working, they all stop working. It is all one system.

Not only is your body one system, but so is the entire natural world. Everything is interconnected and interdependent. Sometimes, it is difficult to see these connections. But if you look closely, you can see them everywhere. Lets look at the relationship of a flower and a bee. Just by looking at them, most people would say that they are not connected. But this is completely untrue. Bees depend on the nectar and pollen of flowers for nourishment. But in the process of moving from flower to flower to eat pollen and nectar, it also collects pollen to bring back to colony for food. Some of this pollen collected by the bee is rubbed off when it lands on a flower or while it is moving on the flower. This pollen that is rubbed off is what pollinates the flower and allows it to produce seeds and eventually new flowers. Many plants depend on animals like bees, birds, bats, beetles, and butterflies to pollinate them. But bees are the main pollinators. One bee colony can pollinate 300 million flowers per day. 90% of the crops ate around the world are pollinated by bees! Without bees, The majority of flowers and other plants around the world would die off. So if the flowers depend on the bees for their existence, and the bees depend on the flowers for their existence, are they really separate? If you take away one of them, you can’t have the other. So are they truly independent? Obviously not. They are completely dependent on each other. They are really one organism. Just because they are not physically attached to each other does not mean they are separate. Now ask yourself, if 90% of the crops we eat are dependent on bees, are we really separate from bees? I think you know the answer to that.

Now let’s look at the relationship of all animals and plants. In school, we are taught that the food chain begins with plants. But technically, that is not true. In the soil, there are microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. These microorganisms perform many important functions: they help regulate the temperature of the soil, they break down the vitamins and minerals in the soil so that the plant is able to absorb these vitamins and minerals, and they act as a sort of immune system for the plant by eating the harmful parasites that attack the plant. Without these microorganisms, plants would not be able to grow. And so the whole food chain would collapse, starting with the plants, then the herbivores, and eventually the carnivores. But these microorganisms also eat dead plant matter and dead animals. They eat and break down the dead plants and dead animals and incorporate this decaying material into the soil. This decaying material adds vital nutrients to the soil allowing plants to grow. Without these microorganisms, plants and animals would not exist. But without plants and animals, these microorganisms would not exist. As you can see, it’s not really a food chain. It’s more like a food circle. And if you take one section of this circle away, it all falls apart. It is all one system, just like your body. Everything depends on everything.

Earlier in this letter, I said that in the natural world there are no independent parts/things or independent events. So far, we have talked about how there are no independent parts/things. But now, I will explain to you why there are no independent events. I will use two examples to show you why this is true. The first will be the process of a baby growing into an adult. And the second will be the formation of the universe. When people describe the process of a baby growing into an adult, they break the process down into a series of separate events/stages so that it is easier to understand and describe the process of human growth. The first of these events is birth, then infancy, childhood, the teenage years, adulthood, and then finally you have the elderly years. But in real life, this is not how a baby grows. The baby is not different/separate from the adult. The baby is the early form of an adult, and the adult is the later form of a baby. There are no separate stages in the process of human growth. Can you tell me the exact moment when you stopped being a baby and became a child? You can't because there is no clear division between these stages (Besides your age, which isn't real, it is just a way to measure approximately how long you have existed.). It is all one continuous process. And it is the same with the formation of the universe. The process is broken down into separate events/stages beginning with the Big Bang, expansion, cooling down of the universe, formation of subatomic particles, formation of atoms, formation of galaxies, formation of planets and solar systems, emergence of intelligent life, etc. But the universe didn’t form in separate events/stages, it was/is a continuous process. And just like the adult which is not different/separate from the baby, all the events following the Big Bang are not different/separate from the Big Bang. They still are the Big Bang, just in a later form of it in the same way that the adult is the later form of the baby. What this means is that you are not a separate and accidental result of the Big Bang, you are the Big Bang! You are the later form of the Big Bang, and the Big Bang is the early form of you. And if you are the Big Bang, than that means that I am also the Big Bang, and that we all are the Big Bang. We are not flukes in the universe, we are the universe, and the universe is us.

And when you realize that everything in this universe is you, it is hard to look at anything the same way you did before. Everything looks new and incredibly beautiful. Even simple things like blade of grass, or something marvelous like the stars in the night sky. It is all you, only in a different form.

The last idea I want to share with you is that not only is everything in the universe related to and dependent on each other, but so are your thoughts and your feelings. Lets compare happiness and sadness. In our mind we think of them as complete opposites. But this is not correct. They go together. And without one, you can’t have the other. If you have never experienced sadness, you would never be able to experience happiness because you wouldn’t have a frame of reference. You wouldn’t have any thing to compare the happiness to. You need to know and experience sadness to be able to know and experience happiness. It is the same with sensations like hot and cold, and light and darkness. You wouldn’t have any clue what hot is if you don’t know what cold is. And if you were to ask a blind person , “Do you know what darkness is?” They would say no. Even though everything they see is complete darkness, they don’t know what it is because they have never seen light. A simple metaphor for all this is the front and back of a piece of paper. On the surface they seem completely different and unrelated. But in reality, they are one. And without the front there is no back. This is one of the keys to understanding life.

I believe with all my heart that everything happens for a reason. Even all the bad things that I’ve been through. They all taught me a lesson that I never would have learned if I didn’t go through them. And maybe the reason I went through depression was so that I would be able to write this letter to you. If I didn’t go through depression, I would not be able to relate to you and I would have no idea of what to say to try and help you. And maybe the reason you are going through this depression is to be able to help someone that is going through the same things you are going through.


P.S. If you are reading this, I want to congratulate you for making it through this whole letter. I know it was pretty long, but hopefully you didn’t get too bored. I tried to make it as interesting as possible.

If there was something you didn’t understand, or if you want to talk about what you are going through, feel free to message me.