A man lays on his couch in only his underwear, potato chip crumbles dusting his chest, a television program he is utterly indifferent to droning on. The man's eyes are glazed. He is alive but very, very unhappy. I will not tell you why. That would take way longer than I have the patience to write. He is simply, complexly unhappy.
As a doctor specializing in depression cures, this is my prescription, and it works pretty well:
I take him up in my single engine airplane; we fly very high and it is very loud. it is an overcast day, but I fly him above the clouds and I ask him if he has ever seen the animated film version of The Hobbit that came out in the 70s. A little light flickers in his eyes that tells me he has seen it. I say, "Remember that scene when Bilbo and the dwarves are lost in Mirkwood Forest, and Bilbo climbs up one of the trees, and pokes his head out above the dark forest and there is beautiful sunlight and butterflies and the music changes? That music," I tell him, "has always haunted me."
"I remember that," he says.
"Look at the clouds," I say, "If we were lighter than air, we could run across them, like Care Bears."
I tell him to stick his head outside.
"Aren't we going too fast?"
"I don't know."
He sticks his head outside for a long time, and when he brings his head back inside, he is cured of his depression.
