The thin line between sorrow and joy

August 13, 2014
             Day 105

I had another reflection planned for today, but too much is going on right now for me to be as light as I was hoping to be.

Last night, I was filled with joy standing on line to see Newsies on Broadway, when a few feet away from me, I spotted someone who had just lost a very dear friend to suicide.  The someone was Harvey Fierstein, and the friend, of course, was Robin Williams.  Harvey looked very sad and out of it, not the joy-filled version of himself I've come to know on video, and when I've seen him around New York before, and my heart immediately ached for his own aching heart.  All the joy I'd been feeling seemed to evaporate immediately.

By the time we got into the theatre, the excitement of the evening returned, and we had an absolutely wonderful time at the show.  My friend Michael was with me, and we had some fun stage-door adventures after the show too, including my opportunity to introduce Michael to one of the cast of Newsies, Giuseppe Bausilio.  Overall, it was a really nice evening in New York, and as I closed my eyes last night in bed, I felt very happy.

This morning, things changed again.  First, we realized the weather had wreaked havoc all over the island, causing Andy's train to get canceled and requiring me to bring him to another station.  The roads all over Suffolk County are apparently under water, and people have lost their cars in what will certainly be permanent flooding damage.  And then the really bad news came in: Andy's uncle (his mom's brother) is in the hospital in what may be his final hours.  He apparently got terribly sick this past weekend, and was admitted in serious condition.  Emergency surgery revealed some horrible, probably fatal truths about his condition.

How do we do this?  How do we all pivot so often on the joys and sorrows of life, and still manage to stay sane?  Obviously, so many of us do not.  We get depressed or angry, or both, and life's many truths often feel like an insufferable, never-ending tragedy.

I'm not writing this reflection in order to explain how to deal with awful things, or even to convince you to choose joy.  I'm simply recognizing the precarious, delicate line we all walk on every day.  We are faced with joy and sadness constantly, and we never know if they'll hit us at the same time, or in rapid, alternating succession.  We just have to go with the flow, and remember to appreciate every joyful moment while we have it, because all too often, the sad moments are waiting for us right around the corner.  The thin line between joy and sorrow requires us to walk with one foot in either emotion at all times, out of profound respect...for both.

Choosing to remember

Boulder Falls area in Boulder, Colorado.
Photo, as always, is click-on-able for the full size.
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July 25, 2014
          Day 86

We cannot escape the uncomfortable, annoying, or downright miserable moments of our lives.  We can't wipe them away, or even rewind time to handle things differently.  But we can always choose what to remember about our past.

On vacation to Colorado and Wyoming this past week, Andy and I filled up more large parts of our brains with new happy memories we will treasure forever.  We experienced so much in 5 short days in the area, and we loved just about every minute of our trip.  We took tons of photos and some videos, and we mostly just basked in the joy of vacation.

Those are memories we choose to hold on to, choose to treasure, choose to remember forever.  We could choose to focus on dragging luggage through the airport, or how miserable our seat mate on the plane ride back seemed to be.  I could choose to focus on how exhausted I was coming into work the past two days, or how difficult it is getting back to a normal schedule.  It'd be easy for me, for us, to call on any number of little miseries in the past week, or from any time in the past.  But instead, we choose to remember the happy times instead.

We choose to take photos of the happy times, not the sad.

We choose to tell friends and family about happy stories from our trips, not bad stories.

We choose to focus on so much that is good, instead of so much that could have been better.

We choose, we choose, we choose.  Our choices are important, because they set the tone for our whole world, our entire emotional universe.  We choose to remember the good times, because those are the memories that sustain us and inspire us, that keep us smiling, keep us happy, keep us ready to take on new adventures in the future.

Our choice for happiness is a simple one.  Misery will follow us everywhere, especially if we keep inviting it to come along.  But joy is there for most of us at many more turns in the road than we realize.  We choose which memories to hold onto, so we may as well choose to remember the joy.