Imagine an alien landing on earth and stumbling into the middle of a childbirth. What would they see? A woman screaming in pain, another woman pulling something from her body, blood everywhere. To the untrained eye, it would look like horror. The alien’s instinct might be to push the midwife away, stop the chaos, rescue the mother from her torment. Only later would they realize: what they were witnessing was not death, but life. Not destruction but a most miraculous creation.

Many of our deepest crises look the same. To the one suffering, and even to those watching from the outside, depression can appear to be an ending. It feels like something has collapsed, and it is hard to imagine that anything good could ever grow from the ruins. But what if this darkness is not a conclusion at all? What if it is the prelude to a birth?

The Emptying Out

The famous spiritual poet Rumi once compared human life to a guest house. Every day, new visitors arrive — joy, sorrow, shame, loneliness. Some sweep in like honored guests; others come like thieves, violently clearing out the furniture. Yet Rūmī urges us to welcome them all. Even the painful visitors, he says, “may be clearing you out for some new delight.” He concludes by adding: 

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Here is the gift of depression: it humbles us, it brings us to our knees — and that is the perfect posture for prayer. It holds up a mirror to the hollow places inside and demands reflection. If we seize it, that pause becomes soul‑searching.

These sorrows are not random intruders; they are guides, messengers pointing beyond themselves, whispering: there must be more. The exposure hurts, but it is also preparation — the clearing that makes room for what is next.

You Are Not Alone

When you are depressed, it is easy to feel utterly alone — as if no one else could possibly understand. Some of us discover that there are darker places even below rock bottom, and we may be convinced nobody else has ever endured such an abyss of despair.

But history is full of companions who have walked this road before us.

Buddha was born into royalty, a prince surrounded by every comfort. Yet he wandered for years, restless and unsatisfied, before sitting under the Bodhi tree in despair. The Russian novelist Dostoevsky endured prison, poverty, and thoughts of suicide before writing works that would change world literature. Tolstoy, at the height of fame, confessed that he could no longer see the point of living at all — until he was reborn into a different way of seeing life.

Within the Islamic tradition too, some of the greatest masters passed through darkness before their renewal.