It only takes a few minutes of watching him in his element that you realize Jim Carrey is a special kind of talent. The kind of person that can have us slapping our knees with laughter, but can also bring us to the point of tears. But behind the image we see on our screens, there is a man that has been viewing the world through his own lens. Recently, Jim Carrey has decided to share his own spiritual and emotional journey through mental illness and give us his perspective into the world we are all living in.
The Life and Times of Jim Carrey
The Canadian actor has been vocal about his struggles with depression, but now he feels he has overcome this obstacle and risen above it. He told inews, “I’m free of the business. I’m not the business. I don’t care what people think of me after I die. All I want is for people to think of me as a good energy here, a nice fragrance that has been left behind.”
“At this point, I don’t have depression. There is not an experience of depression.
“I had that for years, but now, when the rain comes, it rains, but it doesn’t stay. It doesn’t stay long enough to immerse me and drown me anymore.”
While he used to take medication like Prozac for his depression, Carrey now uses nothing that will alter his mood; no alcohol, no drugs, not even coffee. In 2004, he explained how using medication made him feel, how there were too many ups and downs.
“It feels like a low level of despair you live in. Where you’re not getting any answers, but you’re living OK. And you can smile at the office. You know? But it’s a low level of despair.“
Well thankfully, for the people that love him, it’s good news to hear that he has gotten a hold of his depression and isn’t letting it slow him down.
What We Can Learn From Jim
In this video, we hear audio from an interview that Jim Carrey had, revealing how he came about his new vision for his life and how he discovered what really matters.
The video begins with Jim explaining how his previous mindset had him believe that to be happy and to have purpose he had to become something.
“I believe that I had to become a famous idea, and get all the stuff that people dream about and accomplish a bunch of things that look like success in order to give up my attachment to those things.”
But after attaining these things, he knew that it wasn’t what he truly wanted or needed.
“It looks great when you have a cool car and nice clothes and you’ve done something that people admire. But, it can never fulfill you, you can never be happy. It’s not where happiness comes from.
Carrey believes that we are being held back by ideas and constructs we have created, and these ideas are what hold us back from being whole.
“The feeling of wholeness is a different feeling than me-ness.”
These constructs are the things we do that make us who we think we need to are. Be it material things, professional titles, opinions that are just mirror the crowd around, these are all masks that keep us from being whole.
“They’re all characters that I’ve played, including Jim Carrey… they’re all characters. Jim Carrey was a less intentional character because I thought I was building something that people would like, but it was a character. I played the guy that was free from concern so that people who watched me would be free from concern.”
Finally, Carrey leaves us with what he’s discovered about depression and sadness.
“The difference between depression and sadness is happenstance; whatever happened or didn’t happen for you. Depression is your body saying…I don’t want to be this character anymore.”
“You should think of the word of depressed as ‘deep-rest’. It needs deep rest from the character you’ve been trying to play.”
Jim Carrey has been lucky enough to see and experience things most of us won’t have the chance to, but he has brought back an important lesson for all of us: we already have what we need to be happy, it’s us.
