I do not wish to sound ignorant of the real pain/anguish people suffer from depression and damage it causes (I have experienced it, see below the quote from Wikipedia), but I have recently taken to the idea that maybe, for some people, it is a just another part of a natural mental process. I think I may be one of them.

Maybe depression does not need a "cure" so much as it needs better understanding. Maybe it should be reframed to be a little like dreaming - dreams are definitely unique and can be very frightening/challenging but they very often serve a purpose in our psychology and physiology.

Eastern philosophy certainly might have some agreement with this. From Wikipedia's article on "nothing" (and "nothingness"):

"The understanding of 'nothing' varies widely between cultures, especially between Western and Eastern cultures and philosophical traditions. For instance, Śūnyatā (emptiness), unlike 'nothingness', is considered to be a state of mind in some forms of Buddhism (see Nirvana, mu, and Bodhi). Achieving 'nothing' as a state of mind in this tradition allows one to be totally focused on a thought or activity at a level of intensity that they would not be able to achieve if they were consciously thinking. A classic example of this is an archer attempting to erase the mind and clear the thoughts to better focus on the shot. Some authors have pointed to similarities between the Buddhist conception of nothingness and the ideas of Martin Heidegger and existentialists like Sartre,[18][19] although this connection has not been explicitly made by the philosophers themselves.

In some Eastern philosophies, the concept of "nothingness" is characterized by an egoless state of being in which one fully realizes one's own small part in the cosmos..."

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing

I have been there, even just recently - unemployed, out of the "flow" of everyday life, alone, and "in the dark". I have been there before that too.

My family/friends (a small circle as I am a little more introverted) knew I was unhappy/depressed. They wanted to do something for me, but nothing in particular could be done. One thing they did do for me, was when I asked to just be "left alone/let be" - for the most part, they honored that request, staying just enough available so that if I needed them, they were right there. But they let me "wallow" so to speak, as needed. They let me work through it by myself (which is what I wanted - to find my strength from within).

One thing that was different about the most recent bout with "depression" was that I decided to a certain extent, based on my previous experiences with it, to just let it happen and feel it fully/accept my feelings. Luckily, I am not suicidal, nor never enough to be serious about it. I think sometimes the suicide part comes from listening to certain internal urges that people for one reason or another cannot resist.

This is just an idea from my personal experience - I know I have been "depressed" - and I know it doesn't feel good. But, somehow, allowing myself to feel it - with the limit being that I wanted to live because living is all about experience and feeling things (even feeling nothing) - allows me to get through it.

My kernel of corn moment was sitting on the bathroom floor holding my dog who was very ill and might have died from pesticide poisoning in my lap, crying and holding her as she slept in my arms. She just looked up at me and even feeling sick & tired, she licked my nose. For various reasons in my own life, that moment was incredibly symbolic and pretty much nothing else mattered except that. Somehow, that "realization moment"/"breakthrough moment" brought me back this time.