Are we lying?
Or is it that we have a limited perception of what's available?
66% of a letter I received from a friend this week was a bitch -- about the lack of parking in North Adelaide, the failure of a doctor's receptionist to give correct information, and comment about a cleaning lady she calls "Miss Woeful". (Am I the only person to see irony in that?). I commented that "You seem to be having a bad day", to which she retorted with characteristically bristling energy "Not at all -- I'm happy-happy!"
Two possibilities occurred to me:-
- She IS happy, being unhappy. Maybe there's supposed to be juice in carping and unhappiness. In any case, she's out of her comfort zone unless she's unhappy; or....
- What she's actually saying is that "In a very narrow mini-spectrum within the whole Happiness Scale, I'm at the "happy" end of the range of feelings I allow myself to experience." She is relatively happy. My empathetic feedback evoked a retaliation to defend what she automatically perceived as an attack on the narrowness of what she's willing to experience. That wasn't my intention at all, but she doesn't know that. And my telling her isn't going to change her mind.
Don't you and I do the same thing?
Sometimes?
Aren't we afraid that, it we are willing to be wildly, ecstatically happy -- and show it -- we have to risk going through the polar opposite of that? It's true. We do have to take that risk. Our mistake is to think it may be fatal. Without an interplay of opposites, life soon gets monotone-ous. It's OK to be unhappy; you get to appreciate "happy" all the more!
Then again, there's an issue with the Purpose of Deliberate Unhappiness and Self-Limitation. If we outwardly show how truly happy and unlimited we are, who gets let off the hook? Who, in the past, have we tried to control by contracting and withdrawing our happiness?
Who does it to you?
Come in spinner!
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