Night Train

Posted on February 11, 2005 in Depression Silicon Valley

When we lived in Palo Alto, the main line of the Southern Pacific running into San Francisco passed about six blocks from our home. In the middle of the night, I’d hear freight trains rumbling through if I’d come awake in a fit of anxiety. I’d count the clanks of the wheels, imagining each thump to represent one car.

Today, a friend told me that he was “sick and tired of being sick and tired”. When I was down in 1993, I remember saying those very words about my melancholy. The image of the train came to me as I pondered his phrasing. “Phil,” I said. “What you’re doing is inviting the big train to stop and dump its whole load of coal down on you. It’s going to pass the station whether you want it to or not. But instead of stopping it, just let it roll through, even though it may have a thousand cars.”

That’s how I make a depression into sadness. I don’t tense myself up: if issues that I can’t or don’t want to resolve rumble by, I don’t tie my spirit to the tracks. I let them pass.