I have to admit that the current week has not started out all that well for me, leaving me to ask "Is it just that time of year or are issues and differences simply being magnified?"
There's a familiar refrain from George and Ira Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, "Summertime and the livin' is easy". Leave it to someone, however, to ask if the living is really that much harder in the middle of the winter? Personally, I do think that summertime living is a lot easier, because I am not all that fond of winter and all that the season entails, but I do understand the question.
What are these great seasonal extremes if not opposite sides of the same coin? Much like joy and depression being more closely linked than many people think. Success and failure have a similarly symbiotic relationship.
When you are down, the only place you can go is up. And when you are up...Well, let's worry about that when you are up.
Admittedly, it does not take much to set me off. Contrary to a tough exterior, I struggle with over-sensitivity in times of conflict, often wondering if I should apologize for who I am. Victimization can have that kind of affect on you.
I don't know about you, but I am subject to short periods of sadness and melancholy (often self-inflicted, other times imposed by outside sources -- i.e. people) always followed by a burst of happiness and optimism. I do not know how to attribute either one of those feelings that come over me. Maybe it is just the way that I am wired, but I have come to accept sad times with the rationalization that "this too shall pass". Looking at it from a positive standpoint, sadness and disappointment have often resulted in some of my most serious and creative moments.
Health specialists often refer to these opposite sides of the emotional spectrum as a mood disorder, but I think that it amounts to a matter of degree and how we learn to control or balance all of our emotions. The reality of either a heads or a tails coming up when we flip the coin of life, has to be realized, accepted and dealt with from a rational perspective.
We should grasp the fact that sadness has the unexplained potential to make us very happy. Strange, isn't it? But we would do well to always remember that.
Without fail, winter turns into summer when the livin' is a lot easier.
I can't wait!
What are these great seasonal extremes if not opposite sides of the same coin? Much like joy and depression being more closely linked than many people think. Success and failure have a similarly symbiotic relationship.
When you are down, the only place you can go is up. And when you are up...Well, let's worry about that when you are up.
Admittedly, it does not take much to set me off. Contrary to a tough exterior, I struggle with over-sensitivity in times of conflict, often wondering if I should apologize for who I am. Victimization can have that kind of affect on you.
I don't know about you, but I am subject to short periods of sadness and melancholy (often self-inflicted, other times imposed by outside sources -- i.e. people) always followed by a burst of happiness and optimism. I do not know how to attribute either one of those feelings that come over me. Maybe it is just the way that I am wired, but I have come to accept sad times with the rationalization that "this too shall pass". Looking at it from a positive standpoint, sadness and disappointment have often resulted in some of my most serious and creative moments.
Health specialists often refer to these opposite sides of the emotional spectrum as a mood disorder, but I think that it amounts to a matter of degree and how we learn to control or balance all of our emotions. The reality of either a heads or a tails coming up when we flip the coin of life, has to be realized, accepted and dealt with from a rational perspective.
We should grasp the fact that sadness has the unexplained potential to make us very happy. Strange, isn't it? But we would do well to always remember that.
Without fail, winter turns into summer when the livin' is a lot easier.
I can't wait!
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