Summertime, and the livin's easy

Yesterday morning I was in a bit of a bad mood, it is true. All of the Old Feelings... the ones from the winter... the feeling that everything I did was cosmically worthless... they were returning. Not just depressing thoughts like "in the vastness of geological time, a single lifetime is smaller than a mote of dust and just as influential"; but more just that what I was doing seemed so untied to anything important--- human existence, fraternity, kindness, service, duty, and everything else with any value in this world. Yeah. Those are hard feelings to suppress, once they grab a hold of you. I'd had a meeting with my advisor and I realized that for the next couple years I might have to argue with him about things that he isn't going to want to change his mind about. Either I was going to shut up and write what he told me to write, or I was in for a lot of arguments in order to write what I really thought was right. It broke the tide of mood that I had been sailing on since the summer came into my life.

So I did what I usually do to make myself happy, I retreated to one of the highest floors of the library, and after I did some work for Project FG I samba'd around in front of the elevator until it opened, and then I did a crazy dance while the elevator descended ten floors. I walked on confining walls instead of the sidewalk... there were these two stones and I'd been thinking about just leaping between them but I wasn't sure I could jump that far... I just went for it (and made it!). My brand new MP3 player was key- I specifically listened to happy songs, and I imagined myself to be like one of those people in the ipod commercials, only I would be the shadow person, not the boring restrained regular person. There isn't anyone on campus anymore, so I get to dance like a maniac wherever I want.

Then I went and played some more soccer. I never want to go to soccer, but whenever I get there I always have a hilarious good time, because I love that game. We played two on two, Alida and I against Patrick and Gareth, so basically America vs Europe or perhaps girls vs boys. Alida and I CREAMED Patrick and Gareth... probably to the tune of more than ten to zero, though they almost scored a goal once- it went off the "post". Eventually it was getting a bit embarrassing, because the Patrick the frenchmen's manhood seemed to be at stake, and Alida and Gareth are dating. These kinds of fun events usually aren't that helpful to the old relationship. So Alida and I called off the game because of the mild rain but we'd still played for quite a while altogether and it was quite fun.

The honest truth is that when I started feeling crappy yesterday, I didn't want to feel like that. Ok, so you say... nobody likes feeling crappy, eh? But actually, if you examine it, oftentimes when you feel really crappy you do enjoy in some respect how crappy you are feeling and how complainy you are being and you don't really want to take the necessary steps to make yourself feel happy again (whatever those might be). It's like when I'm sick and I'm in some kind of pain and I complain to my parents and they say, "Take an Advil."
Logically I know that taking an Advil will make me feel better, but in addition to my general dislike of medicine in general, don't you ever just like being just a little pathetic and miserable sometimes? Quietly (or loudly) nobly suffering through some ill, the greater forces of biology seizing control of your body...!!! Just...suffering a little bit? I always think to myself that if I take a medicine that masks the pain, that I'm putting a damper on my body and I might not hear the important signals that it's trying to send me. (See: Injuring your leg and then taking like 6 Advils and running on it anyway) But then when someone tells you, "But you are suffering absolutely needlessly, for a silly and stupid reason, and you could easily stop suffering and get back to work." you feel a little bit sheepish, and not so noble or smart at all. Then you take the Advil, and then you feel better, and then you get distracted, and you find that feeling healthy is indeed actually better than being sick, and there aren't really any crazy consequences for ignoring some bad feelings, and off you go.

It's like that classic book I just love now, that my sister recommended to me: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? They made the movie Blade Runner after it, I seem to recall. But in the world of the book everyone has a "mood organ". You just have to sit down at the mood organ and punch a code in and it will make you feel whatever mood you punch in. The main character's wife is constantly depressed, verging on suicidal. Sometimes she feels this way naturally, and sometimes she calls it up on the mood organ, something like, "utter despair" or some setting like that that you think that nobody would ever actually use. One day she's feeling glum and she sits down at the mood organ but she won't punch the number to make herself feel better. She says that she doesn't feel like dialing it. The main character says, "why don't you press 333?" (or whatever the number was) and she's like, "Yeah, yeah, I know, 333 makes you feel like dialing, and then you dial whatever you want." but she still doesn't do it, she just sits there, staying depressed and not feeling like dialing.

So a lot of times when I feel depressed I sit around and I think about how I don't even feel like dialing. I know perfectly well that there are many different things I could do that usually make me feel very happy but I just *don't* do them, because really I'm enjoying feeling lame and depressed and having a pity party for myself, and I don't actually want to change. Well yesterday it was different. Yesterday the cloudy morning gave way to a gorgeous afternoon, and in my mind I dialed 333. I convinced myself that I actually did want to feel better- that I actually didn't want to sit around being depressed and second-third-fourth-guessing my decisions. And then, like a switch had been turned in my mind, I started doing all of the things that make me happy... sluggishly at first, and then more willingly. I had a meeting with one of my favorite professors, which helped, and he and I worked through a bunch of bugs in my FORTRAN code... I learned so much from him in such a short time!
Then I did all the things that I mentioned above, and gradually I forgot about all of those dark feelings and as I was walking home today I started singing, "Summmmmertime... and the living's easy" and running my fingers along the soft tops of the bushes and thinking about how FREE I am right now.

feeling sorry for one's self is a popular feeling.
Being naturally self-centered, everyone likes hosting their own pity parties at least every now and then. Some more than others.
We call them "emo"; especially if all they wear is black. =P
» invisible on 2007-06-08 05:20:43

Name.

URL.

[to enter your email, use "mailto:youremail@domain.com"]
Subject.

Comment.

Word verification.

Copy the first 4 characters only.

If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here.