My theory is that nine times out of ten, if there's a depression, more a social depression than anything, it brings out the best art in black people. The best example is, Reagan and Bush gave us the best years of hiphop.
I guess the best way to describe that would be to connect with the fact that I came out of college just before the big Depression, and I came to New York.
When you feel depressed, it helps to actively change your environment. Go and do something different. Martin Luther conquered his depression by going outside to work in his garden. Surprisingly enough, one of the best ways to handle depression is to go to work immediately on the task you least enjoy. (The chances are your depression is caused by guilt feelings arising out of neglect of those tasks.)
I think the best comedies came out during the Depression. Personally.
I think I have been much of my life an irritant. But some people say that something good came out of my research, something valuable that could be regarded as a pearl, and I can assure those who worked with me it was you who made the pearls and I was merely the grain of sand, the irritant to produce the pearls.
I developed my training routine going into my senior year at Jackson State. I found this sandbank by the Pearl River near my hometown, Columbia, Miss. I laid out a course of 65 yards or so. Sixty-five yards on sand is like 120 on turf, but running on sand helps you make your cuts at full speed.
My role in life is that of the grain of sand to the oyster-it irritates the oyster and out comes a pearl.
The best way to get out of depression is to work out.
From a grain of sand in the Pearl comes.
It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster's shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.
Manic depression is a type of depression, technically, and it's the opposite of uni-polar. Manic depression is also called bi-polar disorder. Some people don't like to call it that because they think it makes it sound too nice, when the reality is if you have manic-depression you have manic-depression.
They really do a disservice because these men and women came out of the Depression, they came out of the war.
My parents, like others of "The Greatest Generation" who lived through the Great Depression and World War II, wanted to provide the best possible life for their children. My mother and father both attended college but dropped out to earn a living during the Depression, working the rest of their lives at blue-collar work.
The pearl whose possession separates man from beast, the pearl which is the rarest find - the best among virtues - is forgiveness.
Sand is one of the best exfoliates out there! Take a handful of sand and rub it on your skin in small circles. When you're done, wash it off and presto... you get spa like skin, without the price tag.
...like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor?