No Getting Depressed Allowed

We live in a world where depression seems to be almost fashionable. You hear some people talking about their “depressions,” and psychologists and psychiatrists have more work every day. I ask myself: why do depression rates keep rising? Does depression have to do with the problems we face in life? Or is it something chemical that has little to do with outside circumstances?

We all know that in this century the whole planet is going through very hard times. But I think of my grandparents’ time (the 1930s to the 1950s) and everything they had to live through, and I realize their era was truly hard! My paternal grandparents, for example, lived through a world war that made them emigrate from their home countries when they were still very young; they lived through epidemics such as polio (I have a great-aunt who was left lame) and brutal flu outbreaks that killed a large part of the family. On top of that, they lived from day to day on what they sweated for, working from morning to night. And my father tells me my grandparents never! got depressed: “They couldn’t, because they had to work all day.”

I don’t remember any of my grandparents (on either side) saying they were depressed. I never saw them downcast or complaining. I remember when my grandmother spent more than 24 hours with a broken femur on a stretcher in a hallway, waiting for surgery, and I asked her, “Grandma, does it hurt?” and she didn’t even answer. She was incapable of complaining in front of her granddaughter.

That example of my grandparents’ fortitude has helped me a great deal in these years and these months. And I have to say, thank God, that the support of my parents and my in-laws has been essential for my husband and me to keep going in this struggle to survive and move our family forward in the country where we were born and which we love with all our hearts, a country that is undoubtedly going through one of the most difficult moments in its history.

A week ago, for example, I told my father I was happy because I had found a homemade recipe for condensed milk so I could make the quesillo my children love so much. And he said: “You see, that’s the good thing about hard times: you find ways to solve whatever problems come up.” That simple comment of his encouraged me greatly, because I felt his support for my decision to stay here until death comes for me.

I know it is very hard! for many parents to see what we, their children and grandchildren, are living through (things that many of them, thank God, were lucky enough not to experience). And there they stand, like oak trees, giving us encouragement and hope, because they know, as we do, that good will always triumph over evil and that you can never give up.

Today more than ever we need to lean on the example of our grandparents and parents to keep going with great fortitude: fortitude not to fall into the cycle of depression, apathy and hopelessness; to bear what we must live through now, and whatever we may have to live through later, with joy and great determination to change what is wrong; fortitude to keep giving the best of ourselves to our families and our beloved country.

This Sunday, December 8, for example, we have to get up very early and go out to vote. Many of us will help at the polling stations until late. That day we cannot feel “depressed,” because here in Venezuela that word is not allowed; it doesn’t fit; it doesn’t go with us! The “depressed” attitude belongs to the defeated, and we will fight to the end for a better future.

Let us be determined to stay strong and happy, in spite of everything, doing good and teaching others to do good around us, sowing values in the face of so much immorality and corruption, doing everything! in our power so that this country takes a different road, where Justice, Freedom, Truth and Peace can be lived by all Venezuelans.

One day we will change course. When will that day come? I decided to stop thinking about that question, because it drives you to despair and paralyzes you. What matters is now, today: doing what we have to do as well as we can, period! (as our grandparents did and as our parents do), without complaining, lamenting or getting depressed, and much less losing hope! Because that, truly, nothing and no one! will ever take away from us.

I wish you all a wonderful day next Sunday, full of spirit, participation, prayer and work. That day we will celebrate the great feast of the Immaculate Conception and show the whole world once again that we Venezuelans don’t stop and don’t get depressed. May God bless Venezuela, and may the Virgin of Coromoto cover us with her mantle and protect us from all evil!