Thoughts on Bob Dylan’s Song, “It’s All Good”

Welcome to From Insults to Respect.

In a recent post titled, “Is Depression Really So Bad?” I presented the theory that conceptualizing depression as an awful mental disorder too often discourages active coping beyond taking a pill. In contrast, if we frame depression as potentially a healthy functional signal, it may lead to less self-stigma and greater self-efficacy in making healthy life-style improvements.

Quite a few folks objected to my even asking the question. To them, depression is every bit as bad as anyone can imagine.

A few psychotherapists I ran into, in contrast, were open to the healthy functional signal idea.However, one such person who was generally supportive, felt there were times when we might want to first consider the particular reason why someone might be depressed. Thus, he pointed out that sometimes, for example, someone becomes depressed because a loved one dies. He went on to say,

“It’s almost five years ago that my lady died. I’m lost now. Depressed? I don’t know. But I do feel rotten, frozen, angry, and bored. And, indeed, there were people telling me that from my misery something good will happen. Mildly spoken, I sent those to Hell.“

To defend my theory that depression, viewed as a healthy functional signal, might lead to more benefits than pathologizing it, I provided a variety of biographical examples of people making significant improvements in their life that had sprung from their depression experiences. For example, the great writer, Leo Tolstoy, described in his own words his bout with his suicidal two-year period of despair.

“I felt that something had broken within me on which my life had always rested, that I had nothing left to hold on to, and that morally my life had stopped. An invincible force impelled me to get rid of my existence, in one way or another…. Behold me then … hiding the rope in order not to hang myself from the rafters of the room where every night I went to sleep alone; behold me no longer going shooting, lest I should yield to the too easy temptation of putting an end to myself with my gun.”

And yet, his depression stimulated a gnawing questioning that eventually led to one insight after another. His trouble had not been with life in general, not with the common life of common men, but with the life of the upper, intellectual, artistic classes, the life that he had personally always led, the cerebral life, the life of conventionality, artificiality, and personal ambition. He had lived wrongly and had to change. And change he did, which led to deeper meanings. “After that,” Tolstoy wrote, “things cleared up within me and about me better than ever, and the light has never wholly died away.”  According to Tolstoy, his suicidal feelings disappeared, and he went on to live a productive life until he passed away at the age of 82 of natural causes.

In a similar manner, I discussed how depression led to valued changes in the lives of Abe Lincoln, Joni Mitchell, and others. And then, a few days ago, I happened to be listening to Bob Dylan’s upbeat tempo song, “It’s All Good.”

At first I interpreted it as satirical, for the examples he gave as being all good were hardly likely to be viewed that way. But then I thought that perhaps there just may be some value in thinking that not only depression experiences might be a healthy process, perhaps there is some value, whenever we meet up with something that strikes us as bad, to pause, and consider if there just might be something within the experience that might lead to, or suggest, in some way, something good.

Consider the first verse of Bob’s song:

Talk about me babe, if you must
Throw on the dirt, pile on the dust
I’d do the same thing if I could
You know what they say, they say it’s all good
All good
It’s all good

Bob’s song brings up an event that typically people prefer not to happen, that is, his babe talking dirt about him. But then he says in a cheerful voice, he’d do the same thing if he could, and it’s all good. How might we interpret these lyrics if we don’t just assume he is being simply satirical?

How about this? The lyrics about the event being all good is designed to provoke us to pause, and then think, how I, the listener of the song might derive something good from such an event. From such thinking, I came to realize that how I had acted might have led to the dirt being said about me. And upon further consideration, I came to realize how I might have been wiser to have acted in some better manner. I also realized I would have thrown dirt back at her if she had done something similar that led to the dirt being thrown at me, but I can’t because my babe didn’t give me any reason to do so. In thinking about how this could have gone down, perhaps some wiser way to act in the future would begin to come to light.

Often, many of us merely get angry about what “bad” had happened and lash out at anyone who might be considered at fault. By pausing instead, and asking ourselves to consider what good just might come about from a challenging event may take us to something that is indeed all good.

With this in mind, let’s consider Bob’s next verse,

Big politician telling lies
Restaurant kitchen, all full of flies
Don’t make a bit of difference, don’t see why it should
But it’s all right, ’cause it’s all good
It’s all good
It’s all good

It’s not so easy for me to see how one can interpret this verse as all good, but my point is not that every time we pause to consider if something of value will come to mind. Rather, that it is all good that we indeed go through this type of consideration.

Well, those are some thoughts that came to me as I considered Bob’s intriguing song. I hope they offer something worthy to consider.

My Best,
Jeff

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