Positive

I'm probably not alone in this by any means, but I tend to write a lot more when I'm down. I use it as a relief valve for my frustrations, and as a way to at least attempt to sort out the confusion in my head. Sometimes it only contributes to my feeling that any activity is pointless and self-defeating...but sometimes it does help. Still, if anyone were actually paying attention, they could be forgiven for thinking that I'm exclusively negative- that I have two moods: bitchy and whiny.

Just this moment, however, I'm feeling pretty steady. Maybe even hopeful, or as hopeful as I get....so I wanted to make some effort to offset the overwhelming volumes of despair and impotent rage. Just a little something light, bright, and upbeat.

The problem is: when I feel good, I'm not all that inclined to write about it. As if I don't want to spoil the feeling with too much attention. Or maybe just that I'm feeling good enough to do something else than sit at the keyboard searching for words.

I don't subscribe to the semi-romantic notion that despair is creative. I know better- despair kills creativity, and anything else that the mind can produce. Despair only creates more despair; when you hear about all those tortured artists who made beauty from the depths, what you don't hear is that they were most likely productive only before and/or after they hit bottom. If you're truly sucked down into the mire of existential misery, the last thing you can do is write about it. You might start to do so, and then as soon as you come up with something like "the mire of existential misery" you realize how horribly inept you really are. It's only when you're feeling a little good about yourself that you're willing to look foolish by creating something.

Sure, a dose of the angst and melancholy can be good for you- it lets you glimpse the Big Secret (hint: you and everyone else you love is going to die, everything worth doing has been done before, and the world is overwhelmingly populated by horrors and heartbreaks). If you don't know this stuff already, you're probably not going to be able to approach life with any sort of honest appreciation of its complex and often paradoxical nature. Sure, there's all sorts of Pollyannas and Candides out there who just love life and don't think too much, and God bless 'em for it...and while He's at it, bless the retarded and born-again and those to whom everything comes easy all their lives. I sincerely wish I could be one of 'em, but that's just not what I've got to work with.

Nope, I'm one of the many who think too much (or not enough in the right way) and for some silly reason feel the urge to make it work for me somehow. I'm not saying that I've got it too hard- another curse of imagination is that you can easily imagine how much worse things could easily be. However, I don't even have the luxury of being able to believe that the way things are is somehow the way it should be, or that things will work out somehow. Nope, for better or worse, I know better...this is how life is: fundamentally stripped of any meaning or virtue besides the ones we invent for it.

The trick is to understand that, among the near-infinite things that we can invent to believe about life, there are some that are better than others. I seriously doubt that there is one 'best' way (a belief which irretrievably sets me apart from both the extremists of religion and science alike), but I also seriously doubt that any given way is just as good as any other (a belief which sets me apart from the multitude of relativists and laissez-faire types as well). I have embraced the dizzying notion that one must constantly balance knowledge of self with vigilant perception and education about the world at large. Let the balance shift too much towards the latter, and you risk forgetting that the way in which you see things colors every single thought and action...and concentrate on the former at your dire peril, for then you start to believe that you can understand everything by introspection or theory alone. And the world will slap you down by refusing to ever conform to your flawless conception...

Was this light, bright, and upbeat enough? Nope, guess not. Just goes to show that positivity is relative...