Bookends

Yesterday was an interesting day. It started with me "breaking up" with and unintentionally hurting the feelings of someone I really hadn't thought cared at all, and ended with me walking away from someone else I'm fairly certain won't even know I'm gone. It was all a surprisingly timely commentary on my post on Closure - if the one person hadn't pushed the issue we would have just faded apart, and maybe faded back in at some point (and who knows, maybe we still will - but at least her feelings wouldn't have been so hurt); and with the other I get to really exercise my theory on the possibility of being OK without real "closure".

It was intriguing to see, too, how both these people operated under my new idea of happiness. In the conversation I was having with my boss we were talking about how people will go to strange lengths and do very odd things under the guise of "finding happiness"; and then when "it" fades or they don't find what they're looking for, they'll keep going in even further and more disturbing directions. My comment to my boss was "Happiness is not where you find it - happiness is where you left it." That's not necessarily always the case, of course, but the idea is worth thinking about. We usually learn fairly early in life how to be happy - what to do, how to behave, the kinds of things that bring us joy. Then we grow up, and get confused, and try new things... and start branching away from those early lessons, rather than sticking to them. Both of the people I interacted with yesterday (and the one my boss and I were talking about) knew how to be happy - and they both made choices that perhaps felt good and looked exciting, but led them to the opposite of happiness.

I guess we need to do that every so often, so that we know what the opposite of happiness feels like - still, it was a powerful insight to me that, instead of trying to go somewhere else to find happiness, I need to remember how to be happy and then take it along with me. I think "finding happiness" is really just about remembering who we really are and how it really works.

All in all, it was a very interesting day.

Day 16 - Lessons Learned (So Far)

Two weeks ago, while coaching drama students, I reminded them that the point of drama is for characters to get what they want, and that no one ever gets what they want by being angry at other people. Just "being angry", no matter how magnificently you do it, doesn't get you anything. In yet another case of Theatre Is Just Like Life, I realized it's the same in the real world. If you are going to get what you want out of the time you've got, it won't be by sitting around being mad about things.

Today, I saw the corollary brilliantly enacted: having psychotic breakdowns will ALSO not get you what you want. This is not to demean those who have had ACTUAL breakdowns - it is to say that being a massive drama queen, panicking, swearing, screaming, crying, and pounding on the floor (and other things) will not accomplish much besides ticking off the downstairs neighbors and frightening the impressionable youngsters watching you go all to pieces.

It's hard to ask for help if you're too busy making sure everyone within a five-mile radius knows The Universe (And Everyone In It) Has Wronged You, you know?