Duplicity.
My job is good.
I have no real supervisor
so it's self-directed
which has been good
but I need to get a move on.
Orientation events start Saturday
and I have meals and games to plan.
I'm sad.
It's a long time
of being essentially happy.
And now I'm essentially sad.
Sad is very un-Beth.
You know I hate Lent.
I am stuck in my own Lent.
Only I can't chart the time to Easter
there's no resurrection in sight.
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"...terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."
ReplyDeletethe first lenten ladies weren't working through an easter timeline, either.
even sadBeth is a great birthday planner. thanks.
Here goes perhaps the most verbose response in the history of the blogosphere:
ReplyDeleteThere's certainly nothing enjoyable about being essentially sad. And having no fixed day of restoration only exacerbates things, I know. As one who friends have described as mildly as "pessimistic" and as strongly as "defeatist," I am typically in a state of sustained Lenten observation.
The way I've tended to deal with my own essential sadness (which might not be the most spiritually healthy way of going about it) is to do my best not to wait around for some overt moment of divine intervention to turn my frown upside down. In my own situation, the cure for sadness is not usually happiness or even "thick skin" but contentment: contentment in the knowledge that any general state of being on the spectrum between sad and happy simply represents a dominant trend in the everyday occurrences of both states. Less nerdily put, every day you have moments of happiness and of sadness and your overall sense of self is going to lean toward the feeling you had the most moments of that day, week, month, year, etc.
For me (though quite possibly not for you), "essential sadness" takes over when I lose hope that the happy moments could possibly outnumber the sad ones at the present time in my life...or worse, when I lack the faith that moments of happiness are still a part of my life even when my heart is too heavy to truly feel them.
For me then, the struggle against sadness is not to replace it with happiness (although that is the best case scenario) but to keep reassuring myself that "this too shall pass." When hope and faith fail, your only option for getting out of the pit is love. (It is the greatest of the three, after all.)
Love at its best draws me out my fixation on my own private moments of experience and turns my awareness back to those cherished individuals who make my happy moments possible in the first place. Remembering loved ones often leads me to remember the past states of sadness they have helped me out of or simply survive. This is why "lost love" sucks so much ass because what was once a tremendous source of happiness that sustained you through sadness is now itself a source of the sad. That's when you thank your deity of choice for providing you with a network of loved ones bigger than any single individual. If to feel the presence of God can be considered tantamount to overcoming existential sadness, then JC leads me to believe that you only need one other person you love to help you escape the darkness. ("If two or more are gathered in my name...")
I don't know if that encourages you in the slightest, Beth, or if I'm even making that much sense. But at the end of the day, you got this comment for free. I hope a drove of happy moments is coming your way.
awwwwwww beth~you break my heart girl-i am here---and you, charlie brown, will lose the cloud over your head...there are rainbows out there with your name on them---and they aren't just in skittle commercials--! xoxoxoxoxoxox! i am here.......
ReplyDeleteI will believe in resurrection for you until you can believe in it again yourself.
ReplyDeleteI love you,
Rachel