Fran Whiting: If you’re in the depths of depression, here’s why you need to go outside

‘I promise that the moment you go outside your front door, you will feel a part of something bigger than what is inside you at the moment.’ Why it’s so important to see the joy in the world, writes Frances Whiting.

I have written before about the many joys of walking, but this week I want to write about it again – and no, not because I have now been writing this column for 23 years and have begun to recycle old ones.

Although, to be honest, when I am staring at the three words guaranteed to strike fear into my heart – “New blank document” – on my screen, I may have dusted off the odd one or two here and there. Let’s just say don’t look too closely at any of the annual holiday ones.

But this week, I am writing to one particular reader who recently wrote to me expressing her growing inability to get out of bed.

Now, I have answered her privately, and I hope it helped, but I’d like to use this column to additionally answer one of her concerns, which was “not seeing the point of going outside when I’m so sad inside”.

So for that reader, here’s a list of things I would have missed out on had I not – over the years – ventured out my front my door, and out my front gate to where these things awaited me:

– A set of sprinklers turning on at exactly the same time two women walked across a park, the water soaking them. Watching their faces turn from shock to joy, then mild hysteria as they held each other up, laughing like hyenas.

– A man teaching his son to ride a bike, running beside him as he watched him wobble along yelling “Go Speed Racer!” at the top of his voice.

– A shower of jacarandas falling from a tree in a swirling, purple ballet while a kookaburra laughed its head off in the branches.

– An elderly couple walking together hand-in-hand, waking slowly and carefully, heads together, marching on.

– A blink and you’d miss it, detailed fairy garden, created by someone’s little hands at the bottom of a fig tree.

– A message, written in chalk on a community blackboard in a park that said: “Samantha, will you marry me?” And beneath it, someone had answered “Depends who’s asking”.

– After a rainy week, a suburban creek bubbling over with joy, and a turtle sitting on a rock, eyes shut, warming itself in the sun.

– A teenager crying, her mother’s mighty arms around her.

– A middle-aged woman in a nightie farewelling a middle-aged man in the driveway of their home by waving a very large palm frond above her head in a circular motion, with a very large smile on her face.

– A very new baby strapped to his chest, a father walking early in the morning, wearing the slightly dazed look of a new parent and different shoes on his feet.

– Grey, pink and white galahs quietly grazing on emerald green grass, like a flock of iced Vo-Vo’s.

All of which is to say to that reader – and to you too if you are in need of a little push – is that sometimes the hardest part (as a wise woman once told me) is putting on your shoes.

But if you do put them on, and walk outside your front door, I can’t promise it will fix things, but I can promise this.

I promise that the moment you go outside your front door, you will feel a part of something bigger than what is inside you at the moment.

You will see and hear and feel the very stuff of life. You will feel its pulse, drawing you in through its seasons, through its joys and its sorrows.

And you will feel – just like the elderly couple holding hands – its courage, marching on.