You Got What Everybody Gets: A Lifetime
In The Sandman, Neil Gaiman’s version of Death isn’t cruel or vengeful. She’s kind, patient, and — most unsettling of all — completely matter of fact.
In one scene, she comforts a baby who has just died by saying:
“You got what everybody gets. You got a lifetime.”
At first, it sounds brutal. How can a baby who barely lived have received the same as everyone else?
But sit with it for a moment.
There’s wisdom in it.
Life Is Not Measured in Time
One of depression’s quiet poisons is comparison.
You look around and think:
They’ve had more joy.
More success.
More love.
More luck.
It can feel like you were handed the short version of existence.
But Death’s words cut through that illusion: you don’t get someone else’s life. You only ever get your own.
No one is guaranteed a set number of years.
No one is promised happiness.
No one is owed ease.
All you get is the time you’re given — and the choices you make inside it.
That’s hard.
But it’s also freeing.
Because if life isn’t measured in length but in experience, then even difficult years are still part of your lifetime.
Not lesser.
Not wasted.
Just yours.
Why This Matters to Me
I’ve always loved Greek mythology. It was a natural progression from my first love: comic books.
I spent a lot of time in hospital as a child because of a club foot. It was the 1980s. There weren’t tablets or streaming services. There were books.
I devoured comics. Heroes who were big, strong, brave — everything I felt I wasn’t.
From there, I moved into Greek mythology. I consumed it obsessively. At eleven years old, we were given a “personal project” at school — write to someone connected to your interest. Friends wrote to Manchester United. Others to the Welsh Rugby Union.
I wrote to “Professor of Greek Mythology, Oxford University.”
Somehow, a real professor replied. He praised my knowledge, wrote to my school and parents, and I was given a special assembly. They presented me with a book: Children of the Gods by Kenneth McLeish.
It was the most graphic book I had ever read. The opening pages detail Cronos castrating Ouranos. For an eleven-year-old in 1987, it was intense.
But it stayed with me.
To me, mythology is a glimpse into the raw psyche of ancient people — unfiltered, unvarnished, honest about violence, chaos, love, and fate.
Which brings us to Sisyphus.
Sisyphus and the Struggle of Existence
In Greek myth, Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a hill for eternity. Each time he nears the top, it rolls back down.
Endless effort.
No completion.
No reward.
It’s hard not to see depression in that image.
You try.
You improve.
You relapse.
You start again.
It feels pointless.
But in The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus offers a radical reinterpretation.
Sisyphus is only defeated if he despairs.
If he accepts the task — if he owns it — then the gods lose their power over him.
Camus ends the essay with a line that has echoed through existential philosophy ever since:
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Not because the task is pleasant.
But because meaning is chosen.
Owning Your Lifetime
What if Sisyphus, instead of cursing his fate, finds something in the act itself?
What if pushing the rock becomes his rebellion?
What if the same applies to us?
Life — especially with depression — can feel repetitive and unfair. You push. You fall back. You try again.
But you still got what everybody gets.
A lifetime.
Not someone else’s.
Not the idealised version you see online.
Yours.
And if that’s all we’re given, then the only real power we have is how we inhabit it.
You may not control the length.
You may not control the terrain.
But you can choose to keep pushing.
You can choose to find small meaning in the effort.
You can imagine yourself happy — not because everything is easy, but because you are still here.
Still pushing.
Still living your lifetime.
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You Got What Everybody Gets: A Lifetime
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