Depressed? Read Kohelet.

The Book of Ecclesiastes can be an antidote to despair.

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In an August 18th editorial in The Seattle Times titled “Historic climate devastation demands historic action,” editorial board member Alex Fryer leads with a confession:

Almost every night, I wake up around 3 a.m. with the same gripping fear.

The world as we know it is rapidly coming to an end. Human activity messed with the weather, something so obviously fundamental to our existence that we should have been on guard decades ago, taking action at the first signs of stress.

This summer has not helped my mental state. As I see it, 2023 will likely go down as more than the hottest July ever recorded. Unless something changes, it will be the year when climate catastrophe became incontrovertible and we became oddly blasé.

Fryer is not the first to express terror at the prospect of life as we know it ending due to climate change. The existential fear of rising oceans and deathly heat waves now has a name: climate anxiety. This is pronounced among younger populations. A 2021 study published in Lancet found that of 10,000 16-25 year olds, “Over 50% felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. Over 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning, and many reported a high number of negative thoughts about climate change.” Scholars, therapists, and mainstream publications have rushed in to assure the anxious that their eco-grief is totally normal.

Fryer is also not the first to lie awake at 3 in the morning stressing out that humankind is about to be destroyed by a cataclysmic fireball. Historically, this has been in the jurisdiction of the deeply religious. Monks and nuns and priests and preachers are the ones who stared at the dark ceiling worrying about man’s propensity for sin and the immanent apocalypse if we don’t turn things around ASAP.

As Jonathan Edwards wrote in 1741: “Tis true, that Judgment against your evil Works has not been executed hitherto; the Floods of God’s Vengeance have been with-held; but your Guilt in the mean Time is constantly increasing, and you are every Day treasuring up more Wrath; the Waters are continually rising an waxing more and more mighty…” TLDR: if we don’t repent and change our ways, God is going to burn us and drown us.

This is not to say climate change isn’t real or serious. But climate anxiety is arguably a form of religious expression: we sinned, we’re paying for it, repent. (And for those of you screaming “but it’s science, not some outdated spiritual concept,” I direct you to the house above I-5 with the sign proclaiming “Science is God.”)

The treatment for climate anxiety from the “experts” seems to be to embrace it, but not too much. Go to therapy, join a protest, reduce your carbon footprint, but don’t lose any sleep over it. However, if you believe humanity is on the brink of extinction, donating $50 to Greenpeace isn’t going to cut it.

There is another age-old treatment for depression: reading the words of our sages.

We read the book/scroll of Kohelet (aka Ecclesiastes) on Sukkot, which starts tonight. It is one of the sources for the popular phrase, “eat, drink, and be merry,” and the source for the song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by The Byrds. A deeper look reveals that Kohelet is the ultimate depressed guy. Traditionally believed to be King Solomon, Kohelet reflects on the meaninglessness of everything. “It is better to go a house of mourning than a house of feasting, for that grief is the end of all man, and the living should take it to heart” (7:2). The rich can be evil, the wise and kind can be poor, a person can toil all the length of their days and get nothing for it, and the more you know the less it all makes sense. Futility of futilities! Life sucks then you die.

It’s a very Jewish way of looking at the world. Do everything right, do everything wrong, who knows? Here we are anyway. Make the best of it.

On Sukkot, we reenact the ancient Israelites dwelling in outdoor huts. We intentionally build these flimsy structures to be temporary and only partially enclosed, with roofing that allows a view of the sky and stars. Putting aside the fact that asking modern Jews to build a physical structure is a cruel joke, Sukkot is sadly one of the only tangible reminders of our agricultural history and our reliance on astral objects and nature for time.

It’s also a reminder of impermanence and discomfort. What we first-world-problem depressed people need is a reminder that yes, everything will come to an end. And probably not in the way we expect.

Says Kohelet: “I realized that whatever God does will endure forever: Nothing can be added to it and nothing can be subtracted from it, and God has acted so that people will fear/stand in awe of Him. What has been already exists, and what is still to be has already been, and God always seeks the pursued” (3:14). As Kohelet’s refrain goes: “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

Yet Sukkot comes with an odd directive, too: be joyous. You are commanded to celebrate. And you thought keeping kosher was hard? Try forcing yourself to be happy. So why read depressing Kohelet? Could there be a link between accepting reality and embracing joy? Could Sukkot be a chance to breach the existential void and grasp something as historically elusive as “happiness”?

The Seattle Times editorial concludes with a doomsday prophecy: “Everyone reading these words will confront the waking nightmare of out-of-whack weather for the rest of their lives. United, we stand a chance. Divided, we fall to ashes.”

In a place like Seattle, where Teslas rule the road, gas prices are between $5 and $6 a gallon, our compost bins are picked up weekly by trucks fueled by natural gas, and a major downtown sports and entertainment venue is literally named Climate Pledge Arena, climate anxiety seems a little misplaced. Alas, Seattle ranks number one for depression, with people under 30 polling at 64%. Maybe there’s another climate problem we can blame for this.

This is all to say, if you’re spiraling into a depression about things that are mostly beyond your control, another way to handle it is to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. For one week, try not to be depressed about the weather, the microplastics, the polar bears, the salmon, etc. Humans have a way of surviving and figuring things out. Your life is short and your impact on the arc of human existence will likely be very small. But you lucked out and live in an era of abundance. Our lives are good enough that we can experience the sensation of impermanence by eating outside in a sukkah for a week. Cold? Grab your North Face. Raining? Go back inside. We really don’t have a lot of problems.

As for the problems we do face, as Kohelet says, there is nothing new under the sun.

Chag sameach.

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