I'll tell you what my teacher said to me when I got to a certain point. He told me that I had been evicted from the home where I had lived all my live. A result of having saved energy had been the disruption of my cozy but utterly limiting and boring nest in the world of everyday life. My depression, he told me, was not so much the sadness of having lost my nest, but the annoyance of having to look for new quarters. "The new quarters are not as cozy," he said, "but they are infinitely more roomy."

My eviction notice came in the form of a great depression, a loss of the desire to live. When I told my teacher that I didn't want to live, he couldn't help laughing.