My brain is finding it very hard to compete with the pain and the medications at the moment, hopefully this will pass soon.

Yet I find I am still happy. Isn’t that strange?

So many of our lives are filled with misery and sorrow. I have no doubt looking back that I was a miserable person, not just for myself but for those who had to be around me. Depression doesn’t just affect you, it has a way of affecting every life you touch.

True, I was sad. I had many reasons to be sad, therefore I was sad. At the time it made perfect sense, and now it just seems silly that I chose to spend so much of my life dwelling on what was wrong with it. There were many things that were right, I just didn’t see them.

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Today the 44th president of the United States was sworn into office. I don’t know how well he will do as president, but today I am hopeful. We, as a society, broke through another barrier today, with our first black president. How can this not be a day of hope?

I hold no faith in politics, or politicians, but I do have hope in humanity. I have hope that someday we will come to a point that skin color, gender, and other physical traits will no longer define a person. Differences seem to matter just a little less today.

Today we came just one step closer to equality, to really and truly fulfilling the vision of our forefathers when they said: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

What a beautiful statement, just a few words that speak volumes. All men, all women, all races, all religions. We are coming closer to a day when we will all truly be equal, and I relish this moment. We still have a lot of work to do, but we are getting there one step at a time.

109 year old Amanda Jones is the daughter of an emancipated slave. She has seen racial equality through from conception, through the birth pangs of the civil rights movement, and now has lived to see the first black president.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Today, no matter who you are, where you are, what you believe, or what color your skin may be... No matter who you vote for... I hope you take a few moments to realize how truly momentous this occasion is. It is my most sincere hope that someday those laws will apply to every human being on the face of the planet.

Today may you take time to give thanks that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness doesn’t mean just one of us, or a few of us but each and every citizen of our nation, and someday, the world.

One of the many things we can be thankful for in this life is the fact that most states are only temporary. As we face economic hardship, loss of jobs and financial security it is a good thing to remember. Nothing lasts forever, not even this.

Having suffered from severe bouts of depression for most of my life, that depression only lifted when I was able to accept this as fact. We are faced with bad days, bad months, bad years, but they always pass. If we can just wait it out brighter days will return again.

We are always in a process of growth and change, while much of our growth and personality development occurs during childhood, we never stop growing. Thank goodness for that. We never seem to want to hear that whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, not while we are in the process.

It is only after the hard times have passed that we can look back and appreciate how much growth took place, how many lessons we learned along the way. It seems hindsight gives us a perspective we were unable to achieve otherwise.

Like most lessons in life, I learned this one the hard way. It isn’t easy to find something good about bad things in our past but it really is there. Sometimes it is a simple as knowing that we would not be the person we are today without the events of yesterday.

A huge contributor to my own depression was the feeling of being trapped in a situation with no way out, of having no choice in the matter. It wasn’t until I began keeping a regular journal and re-reading it a few times a year that I finally saw those patterns, and was able to accept them.

Bad times come, and sometimes it feels like things have always been that bad, which lead me to the conclusion that they would always remain that way. Who wouldn’t be depressed when they look at their life as a series of bad events, with a few good things in between.

It not only leads to depression, but eventually bitterness sets in as well. Wallowing in bitterness is a horrible way to spend a life. Even the good times are spent waiting for the next bad thing to happen. It is an absolute waste of the life when you look at the big picture.

Everything in life is temporary, even life itself. So why spend your today worrying about what will happen tomorrow? If it never happens you have wasted valuable time worrying needlessly, if it does you have to turn around and worry twice.

live for today, but never make the mistake of believing that today's circumstances are permanent, as Miss Scarlett O’Hara noted... Tomorrow is another day.