Sadness And Laughter On The Winter Approach
It’s almost winter and everything’s bugging me lately. I need sunshine and I find myself drawn towards negative people and things.
That’s bad on its own, and not the best prescription for winter blues, I don’t think there’s anything too wrong with it.
I think that it’s necessary to feel a range of emotions. I suspect that people who are happy all the time are either enlightened or have a very narrow spectrum of feelings. I know someone who is happy all the time but enthusiastic about nothing and I think it’s less of a life that one with laughter and singed with anger, heartache or frustration. For me, anyway.
Sadness can be a catalyst and it’s going to be with me. CS Lewis said: “Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”
That’s all the kick I need, so I’m going to start doing things to make me happy. This time of the year has got my spirits at a low ebb, so I may as well -
Fucking hell, that’s it! - OK, right -
Just at that moment as I was writing that line, the steward on my bus down me and reached into his pocket and pulled out a five pound note for the man sitting next to me.
The man was asleep, so the steward said softly: “There you go”, but the man didn’t stir. The steward waved the note across me and in front of him and said: “That’s five pounds for you”, but the man kept sleeping. The steward was torn between not wanting to wake the man and making sure he got his change, but he wasn’t having much luck.
I turned to the man and tapped him on the shoulder. Bleary and a little startled, he lifted his head and saw the money. He took it with mumbled thanks and nodded to me before returning to nod off.
I felt a little guilty about waking him, so I said: “There’s a man trying to give you money, you want to wake up.” He laughed softly to himself and shut his eyes and drifted off back to sleep.
And that’s what I’m talking about.
Be sad when you need to. Listen to Mahler. Sing The Water Is Wide. Watch an England match. Share regrets with your old parents and/or put flowers on their graves. Fall in love. Or, for that matter, fall out. Read poems about the deaths of small children. Study demise and learn from it.
You need to cry. Sadness shouldn’t be a foreign language, but it shouldn’t be your native tongue. You absolutely need to have it, because if you don’t, you will and when you do, you won’t know what’s going on.
Make someone them laugh, send them a job you think they’d be perfect for, encourage their creative side, buy them a really good coffee and think about where they should to go on holiday because you know they’d love it - and do all of these things for yourself.
We’ll all feel better. You never know, next time you wake up, a man could be trying to give you money and that’s not so bad. Unless you’re a prostitute.
November 21st, 2007 at 11:27 am
“Sadness shouldn’t be a foreign language, but it shouldn’t be your native tongue”
Very nice. Although, can I be excused from the poems about the deaths of small children please? I’ll find less sad ways of being sad if it’s all the same to you.
“We’ll all feel better. You never know, next time you wake up, a man could be trying to give you money and that’s not so bad. Unless you’re a prostitute.”
And you say I write good post endings
November 21st, 2007 at 1:18 pm
And you say I write good post endings
“I write good post endings.”
Whatever.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:21 pm
This one’s got me scratching my head. Is teh message that it’s ok to be sad but don’t wallow in it?
I don’t understand what the sleeping guy on the bus did to deserve getting five pounds cash. You were awake and attentive, shouldn’t that have counted for something? You really must have ticked off teh bus driver or something.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Ed - maybe none of that was clear in what I wrote. The man fell asleep waiting for his change. Also - it’s OK to be sad, even to wallow in it, but also be happy.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Long-suffering Jesus.
The right thing to do there would have been to acknowledge the compliment, and reiterate yours to me.
Boys.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Comedy Jesus was what I was going for.
That is so not fair. You know how I can’t take compliments, and yet still you persist.
But now really - thanks Wendy, and you endings are very good.
November 21st, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Oh, I got the part about sadness and happiness. I think that without the dark we can never really know the light, and vice-versa. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat? I was just confused by the sleeping man and what he had to do with Pink Floyd and The Balance.
I would have been happier if the driver had given ME the change because I was awake and alert. This would have made the sleeping man sad, eventually, so Balance would be served.
I like Wendy’s Endings and Your Endings. Your Beginnings are nice too, as are Wendy’s. I think she has nicer hair though. Please, don’t be sad about that.