Mysteries of soul brought to light

Seem to me even when we live in what is still the best country in the world, it's getting harder by the day to look on the sunny side of life.

Because the world's problems are no longer far off across the seas; they come crowding into our living space in multifarious ways, bringing doom and gloom sufficient to put a dampener on anyone's good humour.

Let's face it, with everything from financial meltdowns to climate change threatening to end life as we know it, it's no wonder people are more stressed and depressed than ever before.

Yes, the stats tell us that: one in four suffering with some form of mental illness; burgeoning teen suicide and binge drinking rates; alarming numbers being treated with anti-depressants; and so on.

Much as I'd like to say I rise above that, it's not true.

Having suffered from chronic fatigue for a decade I struggle constantly with depression - and being a social critic hardly helps.

Especially when a large part of the bag is bringing the bad news to your attention, dear reader, in hope it may spark enough concern to elicit change for the better.

Fortunately I have an in-house saviour for my morbid condition, in the form of my somewhat-exasperated wife.

(A solution I can recommend, if you don't have your own already. Just don't take mine.)

Because whereas I tend to see the worst in what both nations and individuals do to themselves and each other, she largely sees the best - because she believes in the power of the human spirit, and that that power is ultimately good.

So whenever I find myself in some melancholic funk about the chaotic senselessness of the universe and the oft-bizarre atrocities of humankind, my wife comes to my rescue.

"You are a candle in the darkness," she said to me this week.

"Why choose to be part of the dark, when you can be a flame that burns bright?"

That's hard to argue against. Because, at base, that's life.

See, you can choose to believe the world is a bleak uncaring madhouse, or you can choose to believe it is a temple of creative joy.

To live pathless in the shadows, or to light your own way.

Easy as that.

Of course belief is a slippery customer, and that doesn't stop the depression trying to creep back in again.

But the darkness is only a danger if you let it snuff you out; if you remember you are the flame and therefore can burn bright, you will.

What goaded me to ponder these mysteries of consciousness this week was the news that scientists had apparently proven that neutrinos - the enigmatic sub-atomic particles released by radioactive decay or within the sun's fusion reactions - could travel faster than light.

Now, accepted physics propounds that everything is a waveform of light; light, ultimately, is all there is to "reality", therefore the speed of light is as fast as it gets.

But if Einstein's classic theory is wrong, and there are ways to travel faster than light, then that implies there are things that exist that are beyond light.

Beyond mind, too.

Could it be that one of those things is spirit?

What we call the soul, perhaps? And that it could burn brightly even when there is no light at all?

Undoubtedly, yes, my wife would say.

And again, that's hard to argue.

So if that's true, then it strikes me what we need to do is concentrate on bringing that spirit into our daily lives, and using it to enhance and uplift our existence.

For if we work with forces that are beyond the dark, and beyond the light as well, then potentially we could create anything.

Anything at all.

Many people call this the power of positive thinking.

You get what you attract. Suddenly science is opening a door that hints that it could literally be true.

In which case, we could remake the world.

Now there's a novel way to end depression.

That's the right of it.

Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.