Famous Depressives

Back in February I DVR’d a special on The History Channel on Lincoln — you know, because it was President’s Day and all. I’ve always had a lot of respect for the man and had read several biographies about him when I was much younger including one by Dale Carnegie. I guess over the years I’d forgotten some of the more interesting details.

Most importantly, I’d forgotten that it wasn’t just Mary Todd that suffered from a mental illness. Abe Lincoln suffered all of his life from a terrible depression and yet he was one of the greatest leaders of the United States of America and he led our country during one of it’s most stressful and most difficult times and he did so brilliantly and with such great wisdom.

After watching that special, my father and I discussed it because I guess I was just so in awe at how he’d managed his life. Oh, he’d had his low points. He’d lived years in darkness and solitude with odd quirks, kind of shut off from the world and then he’d emerge with some sort of cause to motivate him, but the darkness was always there.

There have been other great minds who lived on the verge of the abyss too: Edgar Allen Poe, Ludwig Beethoven, Leo Tolstoy, Winston Churchill, Sylvia Plath, Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Vincent Van Gogh…

I’m sure there have been plenty who’ve hid it well all the while running households, plantations, farms, businesses, companies, empires, countries, armies, etc.

In a way, that gives me hope…not that I’ll be a famous leader some day, but that I’ll be able to manage my meek existence with success. After all, I just have to take care of myself and my pets, not keep a whole country from destroying itself over ideology and economics.

tags: depression, Abraham Lincoln

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