This may sound odd, but I am attracted to misery.
I do not aim to make people miserable. But should I come across someone and sense an inkling of depression and disillusionment I can't help but smile. Something about the rawness, the vulnerability and the devastation seem so real to me. So normal. So familiar.
We are attracted most to what we are most familiar. And I am all too familiar with misery.
It is without a doubt in my moments of greatest deprivation and destitution that my thoughts are most clear, that smells are most potent, tastes are most tantalizing and sounds have never sounded better.
But there is something about misery that happiness doesn't have. Misery motivates change and action. Happiness does not. No one in a state of happiness complains about it. No one who is happy says, "I can't wait to not be happy," or "I have to do something about my life because I can't be happy forever." If we were happy all the time we wouldn't move. And we all know how I feel about being in constant motion :).
But misery? That's not a place you want to buy a home and raise your family. Misery's the sort of place that once you move in, you need to move out. It's important to pass through though. It's the disappointments that teach us what we really want. The depressions that make us dream of happiness.
Light does not exist without dark.
Good without bad.
Happiness without misery.
But being attracted to misery? Now that can be a problem.
Even though I am not in a constant state of misery, my attraction to it and to people who exude it, can make me feel like I am, which then has a stagnating effect similar to constant happiness. Misery is necessary to pass through in order to get to where you are going, but if you stay too long you can get stuck.
And my wave is stuck in a loop.
As obvious as this may seem to others, it's occurred to me that bonding on mutual misery is not an appropriate foundation for a relationship.
-"I'm lonely."
-"Me, too!"
-"Let's get married."
-"I hate my life."
-"I hate my life, too."
-"Let's be best friends."
Not okay.
I have even found myself competing with friends and exes about whose life is more miserable?! Whose plight warrants more complaints?!
Definitely, not okay.
So I have to get out of the loop. I need to keep moving. And unfortunately (and fortunately), that means change. Change in me. Change in my relationships.
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4 comments:
Yes, but does misery make you feel happy? Does the pain exasperated from others give you comfort?
I must admit, I feel that way sometimes. Especially when it is someone very similar to myself. It's almost as if I think, "Oh, thank god I missed that bullet". For instance, when a fellow photographer tries out for a gig that I wanted, but gets turned down.
Now, this may or may not be what you're talking about. Perhaps you're speaking generally about the common situation of one just feeling down. Me, on the other hand, I feel misery is a special part of life... as you mentioned, misery can't exist without happiness. One must experience both, in order to fully appreciate the positive cause and effect relationship in life.
Crazy as it is, sometimes I'm the happiest when I am miserable. When I'm bummed, sad, weary, depressed... there is this feeling in me that doesn't leave me until I've come to that proverbial point where I finally get to make a decision: this road or that road. I know which one to take, but do I really want to take it? Do I actually WANT to be happy?
I can totally understand that it is necessary to have miserable points in life to understand happiness, but the fact that you both enjoy them makes me a little sick to my stomach. I have seen my fair share of misery and in fact and going through it right now, however I want it to change. I want to be happy, I want the "white picket fence" life. And yes maybe that doesn't exist, but I think you can create your own version of the "white picket fence."
I don't enjoy being miserable, I was very much satisfied that whole month when I was on cloud nine about life, since then I have been unsatisfied then as if my own self destruction isn't bad enough all this other shit happens to bring along more misery and bring up past misery and I'm sick of the misery...
Also I really hope we didn't become best friends because we were both miserable... Honestly I think our friendship is more than that and if not that makes me sad and dare say even more miserable.
Once again your honesty is something that is so refreshing. It truly is misery that causes us to better ourselves at the core of our very being. It is misery that awakens us to "a want to" change.
Thanks for reminding each of us that "misery" is okay...but to dwell and sip and get drunk on the state of misery is not where we should stay. Misery leads us to change, and dare I say it causes us to be thankful for those days when we actually do see forward motion in our lives.
"We long to be free from our confusion and discontent, not to have to live out our lives chained helplessly to uncertainty and fear. Yet we often do not realize that it's precisely our confused state of mind that binds us. There is a way to move beyond this ignorance, pessimism, and confusion, and to experience-rather than comprehen-Reality as a Whole. This experience is not based on any conception or belief; it is direct perception itself. It's seeing before signs appear, before ideas sprout, before falling into thought."
"Enlightenment -it's nothing more or less than seeing things as they are rather than as we wish or believe them to be."
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