Blessed Are the Depressed — for They Stand at the Door of Rebirth
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 with a profound advice:
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 us 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.
In the 11th century, Imām al-Ghazzālī was the most famous scholar of Islamic law in the world and was serving as a powerful advisor to the Seljuk Sultan. But he fell into a crisis so deep that he could not eat for months, lost his voice, became a shadow of himself, and withdrew from public life for years. Yet he understood that this crisis was a gift. It was an opportunity for adjusting the course of his life. An opportunity he seized fully, and he returned with insights that still guide seekers today. His magnum opus, written after his transformation, became the most widely read and influential book in the Muslim world after the Qur’an for the past millennium.
Another towering figure, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, endured long periods of solitude and hardship before emerging as one of the most revered saints, often called the greatest Muslim mystic in history.
In early 20th‑century Turkey, Said Nursi reached heights of fame and respect as a Muslim scholar that few others could hope for. He came to be known as “Badīuzzamān,” the Wonder of the Age. Yet he too fell into deep depression and spiritual crisis. He withdrew into solitude in a cave in the mountains, emerging transformed. Though subsequently exiled and imprisoned by the government, the strength he found in his grief gave birth to words that sustained generations of believers.
Examples of such transformations are not limited to the distant past.
Over the years, I have had the good fortune to meet some truly profound men and women: a Buddhist monk whose every breath seems to fill the air with peace and tranquility, a spiritual teacher who is Mercy walking in human form, and an indigenous sage whose mellow singing makes hearts dance in unison. The more time I spent with them, the more certain I felt that these magnificent souls were each cut from a different cloth than the rest of us.
Yet as our friendships deepened, they shared their past lives — full of traumas beyond their control and too many self-inflicted mistakes that dragged them down into the deepest pits of hell. And it was in those dark depths, just as they thought there was no way out, that they met their true selves. They uncovered dimensions within that they had never known, and realized there was no way to encounter that side of themselves without descending to the bottom of the cold, dark ocean.
So if you are struggling, know that you are in good company. The greatest souls did not avoid despair. They passed through it, they were transformed by it, and they all lived to tell their story.
The “Midlife” Crisis
In our own age, we have given this pattern a name: the “midlife crisis.” Imagine a middle-aged man, comfortable in his career, suddenly divorcing his wife, buying a Porsche, piercing his ear, and dating a woman half his age. Society shakes its head. We slap a label on it and pretend the label is an explanation. “Midlife crisis.” Case closed.
But what is really happening? Behind the rash decisions lies a deep spiritual ache: the realization that success, money, and routine cannot answer the hunger of the soul. And while not everyone buys a sports car or leaves their marriage, countless men and women quietly endure the same gnawing dissatisfaction — a resentment they can’t name, a sadness they can’t shake, a sense that something essential is missing.
We stigmatize it. We call it weakness, selfishness, even madness. But perhaps what we are witnessing is not pathology, but the first signs of labor.
Gen-Z: The “Early Life” Crisis
While this crisis often arrived in one’s forties or fifties in earlier generations, today it begins much sooner. In the past, many people did not question life until their forties or fifties. A stable path carried them forward: school, college, career, marriage, children. Comfort delayed the questions of meaning. Only at midlife, standing on the hilltop and wondering why the view was not higher, did the crisis arrive.
But today’s world has stripped away much of that stability. Young people often face the same questions far earlier — sometimes before their lives have even begun in earnest. Who am I? What should I do? What future can I trust when the ground keeps shifting?
This early life crisis can take many forms: confusion about identity, anxiety about career, a restless search for belonging. Sometimes it looks like rebellion, or indulgence, or distraction — burying oneself in endless partying, gaming, substances, or self-experimentation. To outsiders, it can seem reckless, even alarming. But beneath it lies the same cry of the soul that fuels the midlife crisis: “I thought there would be more.”
Just as the middle-aged man with his Porsche is not simply vain, the young woman or man wrestling with uncertainty is not simply lost. Both are experiencing the labor pains of transformation. Both are searching, however clumsily, for a truer self.
The Universal Pattern
Across cultures and centuries, the same pattern appears: the old self must die before the new self can be born. Depression feels like suffocation — like being trapped inside a cocoon with no way out. But just as the caterpillar cannot imagine wings while inside the chrysalis, we too often cannot imagine what is being prepared within us.
It may feel like the world has gone dark. It may feel like nothing is left. Yet in that darkness, something new is quietly forming.
Think again of childbirth. The mother’s pain is not meaningless torment. It is purposeful, holy, life-bringing. In the same way, your pain may be the very labor of your soul, bringing forth a life that is more honest, more free, more whole than what came before.
A Blessing in Disguise
If you are depressed today, it may not feel like a blessing. In fact, it rarely does. More often it feels like being trapped in a dark tunnel with no light at the end. This is precisely why the Qur’an exhorts us: “Indeed, with hardship comes ease” — and in a move found nowhere else in the scripture, this assurance is repeated twice in succession with the exact same words. When we are in despair, we sometimes need to be shaken by the repetition, urged to believe that there truly is light at the end of the tunnel. And not just any light, but a brilliance that will make the memory of darkness fade.
You are not alone. You are in the company of prophets, saints, poets, and seekers who once stood where you stand now. Their despair was not their end. It was the clearing of space, the sweeping of the house, the labor pains before the dawn.
But you must seize this opportunity by staying with the pain, however hard it feels. As Rūmī teaches, sit with the guests, even the unwelcome ones, and ask them: What message have you brought me? What changes are demanded of me?
Think of the 1990s comedy Groundhog Day. Bill Murray finds himself trapped in a single day in a little town he despises, reliving the same cycle endlessly, convinced it will never end. Sound familiar? Yet the story carried a deep moral: to break free, he had to discover why he was stuck, what lessons he needed to learn, and what parts of himself he was called to change. Only then did the cycle end. (It’s a wonderful film — I won’t spoil the final scene for you.)
So take heart. If you are in darkness, know this: the dawn is already preparing itself.
Take-home line:
What feels like the end is the beginning. Blessed are those who are depressed, for they may be standing at the threshold of rebirth.
THE GUEST HOUSE — by Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door smiling,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.