Hello everyone! I hope you're all doing stupendously well. Tonight, I've got something a bit melancholic. It's harsh. It's a bit callous in its contents. It may even hurt to think that it might be you or me.

Today, I read in a book, The Forty-Eight Laws of Power, that stated it would be better to avoid the unfortunate and unhappy. This could be a bit more concise, so let me shrink it down. It isn't saying that anyone in this certain state should be avoided. It's the ones who let it dominate them to a point its detrimental. People who don't know how to quell the anguish they hold so tightly to. Why avoid it? Because it is contagious. In their own self-loathing they have a tendency to tether others into their sorrow. It suggested in the end that we should associate with the happy and confident rather than those who resent others, those who hate themselves, or the poor souls who can't let go of the miseries of their past. As provocative as this is, I found that I could not help but understand its logic. I once had a friend that I knew for three and a half years. Every day, we would get online and play games, but he was easily roused to ire. Soon, it would devolve from two friends playing games to a man yelling and slamming his fist into a concrete wall, which I could hear both. He had no sense of self-esteem, despite my attempts to help him. and he was suicidal claiming that only if he was brave enough, he'd do it. I always countered saying," That's only what a coward would do!" I wasn't a therapists, I didn't know how to treat a man such as him. Sometimes, when everyone was having fun, even him, he'd remark about how his life would go nowhere after someone would state how they were doing well in their own. As you might have deduced through reasoning and , possibly, your own experiences, he was suffering from what I believe is chronic depression. I eventually fell into this same pattern of thought. I immersed myself in that same void of his until about four months ago, when I basically abandoned him. I suppose that I was just another on the list of people who gave up. During a certain point I started to feel like I was exiled to a life of failure, he said that's how he felt.

What do you think? Should we avoid these types of people, or should we devote our best to helping them realize that everything can be meaningful?