Your Own Bag and Baggage

We are living in a world of depression, which means most, if not all, of us are suffering from some depressive episodes some time in our lives. Depression has now become an epidemic even among the younger generation.

What causes depression? Depression is a mental disorder—that is, our thinking mind is the underlying cause. Does it mean that we are responsible for our own depression? In a way, yes: depression is a result of the bag and baggage we all carry with us as we plod along our life journey.

Life journey is forever on a long and winding road with many detours and sideways. On this bumpy life journey, we all carry with us our own bag and baggage, containing our individual beliefs, feelings, and skills, some of which may ultimately become the signs and symptoms of our own depression. To illustrate, we all have own beliefs and feelings. Accordingly, we expect others to comply with our beliefs, and to satisfy our feelings; when they are not met, we become disappointed, and thus creating the contents inside our own bag and baggage. What is inside an individual’s bag and baggage could be anything from anger, bitterness, frustration, regret, sadness, shame, to “what-if”—the major components of depression.

TAO is the human wisdom, which is the Way of going through what is in your bag and baggage. Don't  strive to avoid depression or distract yourself from it with medications, alcohol and drugs, shopping sprees, or even going on a vacation—they don’t work. TAO wisdom is going through everything inside your own bag and baggage to find out how and why it has made you become depressed in the first place.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

My Way! No Way! TAO Is The Way!

TAO Wisdom To Live And Survive In A World Of Depression

This book is perhaps one the few books with an unconventional approach to depression, a universal mind disorder affecting many people worldwide. Instead of the conventional ways of avoiding depression with distractions, such as exercise, suppressing its symptoms with affirmations and visualizations, and elevating its depressive moods with medications, this 180-page book uses the ancient wisdom from China, what is known as TAO wisdom, to experience anything and everything in depression, that is, going through every aspect of depression.  

TAO wisdom may enlighten you so that you can ultimately free yourself from depression, or at least look at your own depression very differently.