A concept: Lawrence was not a scrub who lived off his girlfriend and was too lazy to get a job. He is an intelligent, capable young man, who suffered from a prolonged episode of major depression.
Two seasons and a saturation of think pieces later, my timelines never flooded with explorations of Issa Rae’s treatment of depression in Insecure. A treatment that so perfectly mimics the phenomenon of mental health dismissal, in the black community, that it almost feels like an experiment to see if depression would go overlooked and largely dismissed, even when the internet assembles for cultural critique. It happened so seamlessly that maybe Issa wrote the script with a hint her own cognitive dissonance – either that or she’s ingeniously pranking her audience.
Tall, dark, handsome man in his late twenties barely changes his clothes and is stagnant for years. He wakes up and gets as far as the couch, to dream of what could be, if he could manage to get what’s inside outside. Shape-up: neglected. Beard: overgrown. This is the same character who is talented enough to walk into a tech company, after years of unemployment, and easily secure the job.
In the Season 2 Insecure finale, I heard Lawrence’s character admit to suffering from a mental health issue, but it must have been at the frequency of a dog whistle. It didn’t reach us. I know because I logged into social media and only saw #teamIssa. “Sometimes, I set these expectations for myself and I just shut down if they don't go how I,” he begins to tell Issa, in their Dunes kitchen conversation but doesn't finish. This description is the way that depression frequently manifests in the life of the millennial, the post-graduate, the young adult, the overachiever, who has vivid ideas of what should and could be, but of what cannot currently be realized. Lost in the waning praise for past accomplishments, comparing self to former self, competing with highlight reels, the reality is that many of us are young, black, gifted and depressed. Lawrence offers Issa an apology for not living up to her expectations of him. His apology is noteworthy because, for black men and women, depression is often not viewed as an illness, but is viewed an offense on relationships, family and your own potential. Rather than encouraging loved ones to feel safe enough to pursue the journey to emotional wellness, we tend to judge them based on an imaginary and warped definition of what it means to be strong. “I’m sorry,” he says, “for not being who you expected me to be, who I expected me to be.”
Lawrence’s experience with depression and the reception of his experience by the show’s characters and, largely, its audience is an illustration of the lack of space for mental and emotional health concerns in the black community. We ignore them or attribute them to some failure of person, so as not to acknowledge the reality that, sometimes, we do not simply need more money, more faith, more prayer, more opportunity – we need serious help. Issa's character expresses that she simply did not know how to provide the support that Lawrence needed, so she didn't do it. That is not good enough. We must make room, in black excellence, for not just immeasurable stamina and lists of accomplishments, but also for the impact that striving for such can have on those who experience emotional fragility.
Depression is not a synonym for weakness and a term for folding under the pressure to succeed. It is an overwhelming immobility, a darkness amidst the most shining lights, a heaviness, restraining and holding hostage healthy thought patterns and the ability to simply do. Mental and emotional illness are not "first world problems that n*ggas make up" for sympathy.
On September 25th, 2017, Chance the Rapper, arguably the most accomplished young musician in the music industry, simultaneously debuted new music and revealed that he is mentally depleted by the rise to his own career’s altitude. On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, worn out by the perpetual balance of career, family, imperfection, self-doubt and societal disappointment, a 24-year-old confessed. And, as the media reposted the video and reacted to the beauty of the audio, again, a black man’s admission to suffering from the symptoms of depression did not receive due attention. I waited.
In the song’s title, “First World Problems,” Chance nods toward the notion of an issue that is perceived as being of little importance because it only exists as a result of a preexisting state of privilege. Employing this title to capture the widespread dismissal of emotional exhaustion, especially as it relates to those who are considered successful, Chance walks us through what it feels like to be both full and empty, both suffering and affluent. Directly against verses filled with anecdotes that concretely outline inner struggle, he collocates the hook, “First world problems that niggas make up.” The song is an attempt to dismantle misconceptions about mental health, by way of his own experience that we so well admire and respect. If Chance desires to stay in bed all day, he’s reminiscent of Lawrence. Chance (young, black, talented, trailblazing) is hurting. What now? Is he, too, making it up?
He raps, “I really need a break, could really use a nap…. You go so far you hit a point where you can’t Uber back. The other day, I told a hummingbird he's too relaxed.”
The typical hummingbird flaps its wings at 80 beats per second. The small birds sustain a heart rate of 1,200 beats per minute, with a body weight composed of 25-30% pec muscle. The result of their strength and endurance, to humans, is only the production of a distinctive sound.
Chance, 24 years old, breaking records and providing us with uniquely inspiring, seemingly effortless music, revealed in a single line, to which standard of work he holds himself. Aspiring to grind harder than a hummingbird, exhaustion is inevitable and failure to live up to a self-imposed standard is imminent because, unlike the hummingbird, he is human.
You don’t have to be Grammy award-winning artist to need a break, a nap, a pause button, without any conceivable way of making that happen. You could be a 25-year-old with a rising (though mismatched) career, bills to pay and a family that you love, with one foot in the therapist’s office and the other on the gas. This, however, is not about me and is not entirely about Chance. It is about the inability to carry your blessings, when your heart becomes too heavy or the inability to count them because your mind races with all that you haven’t done, can’t change, but are unable to let go. You “hear the seams snappin',” which is terrifying because “you’re the team captain” and suddenly, you are no longer certain that you’re in control.
He continues, “First world problems that niggas ‘make up.’ Have a dream and then never wake up.”
When speaking of black dreams, it is a miss not to state that Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech outlined the most important dream in Black American history. Now, in 2017, as our teenaged boys are being shot dead by authority figures, for doing nothing other than walking while brown, we are still being judged by the color of our skin rather than the content of our character. We are also still being told that systematic, intentional injustice and inequity are problems that “niggas make up.” For clinging to his dream and working to make it a reality, Dr. King, eventually, never woke up.
Reading the meaning of a dream as an ideal condition that is fleshed out in the mind, Chance’s lyric becomes not only a hint to Dr. King’s life being taken for his relentless pursuit of racial equality in America. It also becomes a critique of the type of success that has come to characterize the “American dream.” Once your dreams become a reality – is it possible to stay grounded in what’s real? Or, even more confusing, how do you identify what the real is?
Throughout his verses, Chance criticizes the way that he sometimes sits on his couch, sips his tea and sends his tweets to address issues that are important to him. He implies that he can see glimpses of disconnection between himself and the communities of which he used to be a part. It's harder, now, for him to #staywoke. When this is true, he is situating himself in direct contrast with the way in which Dr. King lived for his dream. Chance admits to displaying a form of activism, but proving false to its essence. He may think that he's awake, but he can’t verify it, as he has inevitably become so far removed from all his spinning totems or connections to the real world. The act of living has become Inception. In this limbo of “living the dream,” you may never wake up – partly because you don’t want to, partly because you’re not entirely sure how.
To be aware of such duality, Chance gives a window into the battles that he fights within himself.
“When so much turns to too much, have a dream and then never wake up.”
My mom tells me that, as a baby, even if I had just had a nap, I would immediately fall asleep during arguments or conflicts in our home. “It’s almost like that was your way of getting away from it all,” she says.
Escapism is one of the most common coping mechanisms for pain, be it emotional or physical. After a long day in the office, a long day of circumstances or events that are too taxing and complex for me to parse, I come home and I go straight to sleep. It is hard to accept the morning.
While we sleep, our minds function at a different level of consciousness. We are, for a limited time, free — free to experience versions of reality that have not yet manifested or that may not ever or that may have passed. Dreaming, in this sense, becomes a travel in time, from now to simply away from the present. It is the freedom to think anything at all or, equally valuable, the freedom to be unconscious of thought.
The limit to this escape is enforced only when we must wake up. Chance alludes to, but does not explicitly explain, a state in which so much relief is desired, the escape has no limit or there is no awakening. Similarly, the Bible repeatedly likens death to a deep sleep.
“Depress,” a verb, literally means to push or pull something into a lower state. Depression, then, can be imagined as the push or pull of life, on a being, that exceeds the extent of that being’s foreseeable power. The state can become so low that the ability to indefinitely escape or to permanently eliminate the stressor can seem to be more of an option than an enemy.
“The day is on its way; it couldn’t wait no more. Here it comes. Ready or not.”
Chance’s music often refers to God as his source of hope and savior. The day to which Chance is referring must, in the context of sleep and dreams, serve a dual meaning. The “day” is typically used as a reference to God’s day or the day when simultaneous justice and deliverance will be exacted on those who are living. “The day,” as the Bible describes will come “as a thief in the night,” while your guard is down, while you are least expected and in your most vulnerable state – while you are asleep.
If Chance, in the previous line, uses sleep as a mode of transportation into a state of peace, then the day, as in the daytime, becomes the oppressor that perpetually forces you to face your reality. During the work week, my alarm is set for 6:05 a.m (6:06, 6:07, 6:10 and 6:15). And, the new day, which is universally considered a blessing, becomes a malediction, when life has transitioned from so much to too much. The day represents responsibility, relationships, duties and thoughts that all demand a measure of already sparse emotional stability.
Chance sings of the coming day, not just as a praise, in anticipation of deliverance on God’s day. He also sings of the daytime, as a warning or a battle cry, preparing himself for the fight that he’ll face, when the sun rises and his escape comes to an end.
The other day, at lunch with someone I love, I apologized for not always being able to return phone calls. I tried to explain that after sometimes unwelcome days, full of fulfilling demands and performing a version of myself that I don’t have the energy to sustain, I just fall asleep. She responded, “You need to stop saying you’re depressed. Why does everyone want to say that they’re depressed?”
