Giving Something Away

I sat at my kitchen table and thought, "I am going to have to commit myself to a mental institution." I could not do life. I had not had a drink for seventeen years, or a drug. Nor did I gamble, buy expensive clothes or "toys," nor do any of the usual things that create havoc in people's lives. I was trying to live a good, decent life. Yet I was emotionally and mentally sick: self-absorbed, paranoid, and reclusive. Finally, I had had enough. I began to experiment with the three simple tools--prayer, helping others, and giving something away--that have helped to relieve the oppressive cloud of depression, self-pity, and self-absorption in which I lived for the last ten years.