Depression? Anxiety? I can’t work out which. I read a list of symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. The book said that three of them were enough to be diagnosed. I self-diagnosed right then and there, despite the fact that this was more a business book than psychology. Then I kept reading. An absence of flow (as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) leads to this stuff. Just two days of No Flow activities, and the subjects began to exhibit signs of anxiety. They had to stop the study for fear of doing real damage. So – maybe it’s just a general lack of flow.
Have I lost ALL my mirth? I don’t know about all. A LOT. MOST. I hope not all, I just haven’t seen in it in a while. This cartoon about severe depression showed me the inside track of that experience. I feel bad, but luckily, gratefully, not that bad.
Lost mirth is a much more accurate way to describe a feeling than any other diagnosis. Even No Flow. Even. . .anything. It makes sense that this is one of the famous lines. It says something we needed an expression of, obviously.
The Hamlet Project 