In most cases, it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And people value life. Their own and other’s. Because we’re programmed to want to continue the species

If that wasn’t the case: why wouldn’t everyone just kill themselves right now? So they can live life? Why does that matter? If not to keep the species going, there’s no reason.

Because it’s a horrid, selfish thing, taking yourself away from everyone who loves and appreciates you.

“This too shall pass” is true for everything.

If someone doesn’t want to live and doesn’t have anything to live for

This is a temporary problem that can change. Depression isn’t a feeling. It’s a disorder, an imbalance, a prolonged neurochemical misfire. It’s horrible, and feels inescapable.

But any thoughts you have about the past - and any beliefs you have about the future - are directly influenced by that imbalance. There is no true depiction of the past in our heads. No future in front of our eyes. We simulate the past and future in the present moment.

When we access memories, we re-experience them all over again.

Depression prevents you from feeling good, so even your own memories feel hollow and devoid of meaning. A happy memory is filtered through the same process as a happy experience, and both are temporarily (and reversibly) stripped of emotional value while you are depressed.

The same is true for the future. You simulate your predictions as if they are artificial memories of the future, but they are also filtered through your present context.

While depressed, it is much, much harder to imagine a happy future. Not because you have pulled away the rosy glasses and seen truth. Not because you have found cold logic. No. You are, ever and always, an emotional animal, and you are defined even by your lack of an emotion.

To imagine a happy future is to simulate a happy experience. It’s required - to imagine oneself happy later, they literally have to experience that ‘potential’ happiness now.

With depression, the past feels faded and the future feels hopeless. But - unlike depression - those are just feelings. Those are literally just in your head.

Your perceived past and predicted future are defined by the range of experience you can have in the present moment. If you can’t feel happy now, you can’t fully process that your life was ever happy or will ever be happy again. But those are just feelings.

It might not feel like it now, but you have been happy before. You can be happy again, as long as you live. Not for as long as you live… but only if you live. The only thing that can stop you is death.

This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you. . . You will be warm again.

• Wit, a Brandon Sanderson treasure.

He does real nega shit.

It means negative, or polar opposite.

Opposite Wojak, oh no :(

Here’s the picture without the captions:

I believe this was the original tweet: https://x.com/fw_me_or_die/status/1641970194351370241

(Non-twitter link: https://xcancel.com/fw_me_or_die/status/1641970194351370241)