Sad is not an easy thing to be. In the process of trying to cure sadness, we, as humans, have perfected the art of being sad. I really wonder if we perpetuate it in the process. Of course, when I look at the simplicity of that statement, it makes me laugh. Of COURSE we perpetuate it by trying to get rid of it. So the more interesting "wonder" for me is "why." Why does trying to make the sadness go away perpetuate the sad? I suppose failure at striving to no longer be sad would make a person sad. Trying so hard to deny the impact and power~the very existence~of the thing that makes a person sad, yup, that would perpetuate sadness.
And yeah, I'm talking in third person, because overall, I am not sad. Not in this moment. And most of my moments are not sad moments. I don't know why, but they aren't. And there has been a *lot* of sad sh!t in my life. At some point in my life, though, my percentage of happiness began to consistently outweigh my percentage of not-happiness. Now some of this is relative. Sad, according to the first result in Google, is defined as "feeling or showing sorrow; unhappy." That's not the sad I'm talking about, though. I'm talking about when a person's spirit is sad. I'm talking about when you strip off the layers of work and school and family and school and everyday life and relationships and the past and the future and... the weather and everything... and just look at what's left. That is the space I'm talking about. That space in me... is happy. And I don't think I'm lying to myself. I... am happy. I think I am happy, therefor I am happy. I don't think that's what Decartes meant, but I like it.
And what spawned this? I went to work today. For the first time since my amputation/surgery/cancer/whatever/transformation~into~alter-super-ego. And still, I inherently feel no different than I did 4 weeks ago. Well, that's not true. Four weeks ago, I was walking through Walmart with tears streaming down my face and my arms out with "Chandelier" on the intercom, beelining for a blue tee with a pink Superman logo. 4 weeks ago, my amputation/surgery/blah~blah~blah was in a few hours. So I inherently feel no different than I did... on June 18th. That is the day before I found the lump in my breast. The sadness and concern on my colleague's faces was... nice. It was sweet. It was honest. I didn't feel pitied or anything. I just... didn't feel like I think they thought I must feel.
And then we interviewed three people for a new history position and over the next few hours, in the back of my mind, this sadness thing started to take shape. I may be wrong, but I seem to feel a sadness in most people I know. A deep sadness, I think. I could be wrong. But I don't think I am. Not in most cases. But I want them to be. I want the people I care about to be... happy. Surface happy and spirit happy. I want to help. I want... the liberating freedom of this kind of clarity for everyone without them having to go through what I did to find their clarity. I feel so helpless, though. I want my presence in their lives to make their lives easier. Brighter. Happier. But I so often feel that the opposite is true. Sad is not an easy thing to be. In the process of trying to cure sadness, we, as humans, have perfected the art of being sad and I wonder if we perpetuate it in the process. Of course, when I look at the simplicity of that statement, it makes me laugh. Of COURSE we perpetuate it by trying to get rid of it. So the more interesting "wonder" for me is "why." Why does trying to make the sadness go away perpetuate the sad? I suppose failure at striving to no longer be sad would make a person sad. Trying so hard to deny the impact and power~the very existence~of the thing that makes a person sad, yup, that would perpetuate sadness.
I guess that means me striving to help could perpetuate the very problem. Sad is a necessary state of being. It is also transitory. People have been there for me when I was sad. Surface sad and spirit sad. I can be there for my people, too. If nothing else, I've learned you don't cure sadness, you just live it. Maybe we live it all the time, I don't know. Maybe it's just a process of rewriting the dictionary.
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