"... life always provides reasons not to die, if we listen hard enough. Those reasons can stem from the past—the people who raised us, maybe, or friends or lovers—or from the future—the possibilities we would be switching off. ..." (from the chapter "A beautiful view")

Matt Haig's Reasons to Stay Alive is an intensely personal, immensely important little book. It's a view-from-inside description of his depression and how it came, went, and returned – repeatedly. Especially insightful are some of his lists, such as this one from the chapter "How to be there for someone with depression or anxiety":

1. Know that you are needed, and appreciated, even if it seems you are not.
2. Listen.
3. Never say "pull yourself together" or "cheer up" unless you're also going to provide detailed, foolproof instructions. (Tough love doesn't work. Turns out that just good old "love" is enough.)
4. Appreciate that it is an illness. Things will be said that aren't meant.
5. Educate yourself. Understand, above all, that what might seem easy to you—going to a shop, for instance—might be an impossible challenge for a depressive.
6. Don't take anything personally, any more than you would take someone suffering with the flu or chronic fatigue syndrome or arthritis personally. None of this is your fault.
7. Be patient. Understand it isn't going to be easy. Depression ebbs and flows and moves up and down. It doesn't stay still. Do not take one happy/bad moment as proof of recovery/relapse. Play the long game.
8. Meet them where they are. Ask what you can do. The main thing you can do is just be there.
9. Relieve any work/life pressure if that is doable.
10. Where possible, don't make the depressive feel weirder than they already feel. Three days on the sofa? Haven't opened the curtains? Crying over difficult decisions like which pair of socks to wear? So what. No biggie. There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.

Haig talks about panic, despair, smoking, drinking, anxiety, and many other facets of his depression. He tells what sometimes helped him – literature, travel, medication, and above all friendship. The chapter "Running" describes his experience with exercise and concludes:

It helped, sometimes. Not always. It wasn't foolproof. I wasn't Zeus. There were no magic thunderbolts at my disposal. But it is nice to build up, over the years, things that you know do—on occasion—work. Weapons for the war that subsides but that can always ignite again. And so writing, reading, talking, traveling, yoga, meditation, and running were some of mine.

Near the end of this tiny book Haig offers "How to live (forty pieces of advice I feel to be helpful but which I don't always follow)". A small subset-sample:

3. Be gentle with yourself. Work less. Sleep more.

10. Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.

14. Look at the sky. Remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek vastness at every opportunity, in order to see the smallness of yourself.

15. Be kind.

22. Live. Love. Let go. The three Ls.

25. Read a book without thinking about finishing it. Just read it. Enjoy every word, sentence, and paragraph. Don't wish for it to end, or for it to never end.

28. If someone loves you, let them. Believe in that love. Live for them, even when you feel there is no point.

32. Remember that there is nothing weird about you. You are just a human, and everything you do and feel is a natural thing, because we are natural animals. You are nature. You are a hominid ape. You are in the world and the world is in you. Everything connects.

39. Just when you feel you have no time to relax, know that this is the moment you most need to make time to relax.

40. Be brave. Be strong. Breathe, and keep going. You will thank yourself later.

So important, so good. Awesome advice for those in depression — and for everyone else.

And it all boils down to love ...

_{(cf Therapies for Depression (2015-10-04), Another Look at Depression (2018-08-12), Michael Gerson sermon (2022-11-19) Midnight Library (2025-01-11), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-18}