Noting the stress, depression, and existential angst experienced by so many powerful, successful people, sporadically employed carpenter/handyman Gary Hanley of Nashville, Tennessee, has opted for low-functioning happiness over high-functioning depression.
“I don’t bring my work home with me since a lot of the time, I don’t have any work to bring home,” said Hanley. “It’s a win-win.”
Hanley generally spends his days off, which outnumber his days on, playing video games, watching T.V., or sometimes taking the dog to the dog park for 20 minutes or so. “I don’t try to pack too much in, since that would defeat the purpose. They say work hard, play hard, but I prefer to work soft, play even softer. You know, just kind of chill.”
Gary's live-in girlfriend, Geneva Harper, serves as an example of the sort of high-functioning depression he aims to avoid. “She’s knocking it out of the park at work, exercises daily, looks amazing, but then she gets all riled up when she comes home and the house is a mess and dinner’s got to be made."
He shook his head sympathetically. "I see her start questioning everything, like she what’s it all for? She does all this amazing stuff, and for what? Where has it gotten her?”
Hanley himself, on the other hand, asks no such questions. “Stress is so toxic to the body, and to relationships. Our relationship already has its challenges, and she’s got enough stress for the both of us. The last thing she needs is for me to start adding more by getting into some kind of high-power achievement game.”
Witnessing the suffering of his high-functioning partner has made Hanley committed to raising societal awareness about people with high-functioning depression. “They don’t have it easy. They often feel very alone in their burdens.”
For these reasons, Hanley feels good about contributing in his own way to the peace and serentity of the household by focusing less on doing and more on just being. “When it’s go, go, go all the time, we lose touch with our humanity. People need to know that they don’t have to justify their own existence. They’re enough just as they are.”
And until the time that his partner is able to learn that lesson for herself, Hanley aims to support her in every way possible - apart from financially, that is. “She’s got that aspect covered.”
