Based on the recent postings on happiness, I've decided to start a new trend for Rantings; every entry will start with something I'm thankful about. In Trinidad, we are coming into the season of the Poui. Poui trees are beautiful, wild, tall, deciduous trees that flower in pinks, yellows and oranges around this time of year. They make the usually richly green mountains brilliant with colour when they are all in bloom. I love to watch out for the very first Poui bloom of the season, and slowly track the progress as others begin to follow suit, because they are so quickly gone, blending in to the lush greens of the mountainside. I am thankful to live in a landscape paradise. God has done great, great work here.
Today, I am thinking of any really excellent piece of music; have you ever noticed how there are always ebbs and flows to it? I really enjoy classical music, and in this genre there is often an indicated crescendo (escalating) and diminuendo (de-escalating) moment which adds drama and movement to the piece. In other styles of music, sometimes it is the darkness of the lyrics that creates drama and the emotion there is appealing to the listener because it is honest, or raw, or relate-able to the bobbing states that every person experiences in life. In an interview I saw with the British musician and songwriter Adele, she said that after all of the success of her first (19) and particularly her second album, 21, she found that she was happy. Both she and the interviewer joked that something needed to happen before her next album, as happy doesn't sell as much as anguish does.
The fact is, we all go through the low moments and the high moments that life is made up of. Sometimes, we can worry ourselves into believing that there is something wrong with us if something is wrong with us. I say that very tongue-in-cheek, because I have seen many clients who think like this, and I have definitely seen it in myself - if something makes me sad or acutely emotional in any way, if I can't fix it right away then I begin to rebuke myself. "Snap out of it!" I can't tell you how many clients panic about being crazy if they have an unpleasant emotion for too long.
Now, don't get me wrong; in mental illness (for example, depression), people can definitely get to the point where they are catastrophizing every event in their lives, and they can become consumed by negative emotions. In these cases, sometimes medication is required to return the biochemical mechanisms in their brain to the proper balance, and sometimes the therapist's main intervention will include re-framing the client's spontaneous thoughts, and seeking to alter the thoughts that a client chooses to focus on. My point in talking about feeling bad when things happen that are hard to deal with is to say this: it is okay to feel bad sometimes. In my life, I have felt bad because I have been depressed. I actually remember crying one time because I couldn't believe I was feeling this bad. My depression depressed me. Why? Because the message is usually that negative emotions are a bad thing, and we shouldn't ever focus on them.
I don't know, maybe I'm just not like everyone else, but I think that the negative emotions are a really important part of our lives, and their expression is CRUCIAL to mental health. In my life, the first 25 years or so were spent being really emotionally closed, being really really far from my emotions in relation to everyone else, and the reward was that no one really knew me that well. People saw me as strong, sure, but I was never at liberty to say "I'm hurting" or "I need..." In the last two or three years I've been actively changing this about myself. I've been intentionally admitting to my world that I am a whole person - I am the strong, independent and wildly hilarious person that is impressed upon you the minute you meet me, but I am also soft hearted, sensitive and immensely loving. None of these are secrets I wish to keep. Cut me and I bleed. When things go terribly in my life, I cry about them. I'm not at all sorry about this.
To go back to the title statement, the best music ebbs and flows. The best people have all dimensions. Excellent people's stories compel you because they aren't made of success from start to finish. The bigger the trials a person overcomes, the more inspirational their story is at the end. When my life is over, I want my loved ones to look at my life, maybe read my journals and say "WOW look at how much there is here!" I want the bad to be represented as much as the good will be, because this is what I have overcome, and this is the music I've made with it.
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Today, I am thinking of any really excellent piece of music; have you ever noticed how there are always ebbs and flows to it? I really enjoy classical music, and in this genre there is often an indicated crescendo (escalating) and diminuendo (de-escalating) moment which adds drama and movement to the piece. In other styles of music, sometimes it is the darkness of the lyrics that creates drama and the emotion there is appealing to the listener because it is honest, or raw, or relate-able to the bobbing states that every person experiences in life. In an interview I saw with the British musician and songwriter Adele, she said that after all of the success of her first (19) and particularly her second album, 21, she found that she was happy. Both she and the interviewer joked that something needed to happen before her next album, as happy doesn't sell as much as anguish does.
The fact is, we all go through the low moments and the high moments that life is made up of. Sometimes, we can worry ourselves into believing that there is something wrong with us if something is wrong with us. I say that very tongue-in-cheek, because I have seen many clients who think like this, and I have definitely seen it in myself - if something makes me sad or acutely emotional in any way, if I can't fix it right away then I begin to rebuke myself. "Snap out of it!" I can't tell you how many clients panic about being crazy if they have an unpleasant emotion for too long.
Now, don't get me wrong; in mental illness (for example, depression), people can definitely get to the point where they are catastrophizing every event in their lives, and they can become consumed by negative emotions. In these cases, sometimes medication is required to return the biochemical mechanisms in their brain to the proper balance, and sometimes the therapist's main intervention will include re-framing the client's spontaneous thoughts, and seeking to alter the thoughts that a client chooses to focus on. My point in talking about feeling bad when things happen that are hard to deal with is to say this: it is okay to feel bad sometimes. In my life, I have felt bad because I have been depressed. I actually remember crying one time because I couldn't believe I was feeling this bad. My depression depressed me. Why? Because the message is usually that negative emotions are a bad thing, and we shouldn't ever focus on them.
I don't know, maybe I'm just not like everyone else, but I think that the negative emotions are a really important part of our lives, and their expression is CRUCIAL to mental health. In my life, the first 25 years or so were spent being really emotionally closed, being really really far from my emotions in relation to everyone else, and the reward was that no one really knew me that well. People saw me as strong, sure, but I was never at liberty to say "I'm hurting" or "I need..." In the last two or three years I've been actively changing this about myself. I've been intentionally admitting to my world that I am a whole person - I am the strong, independent and wildly hilarious person that is impressed upon you the minute you meet me, but I am also soft hearted, sensitive and immensely loving. None of these are secrets I wish to keep. Cut me and I bleed. When things go terribly in my life, I cry about them. I'm not at all sorry about this.
To go back to the title statement, the best music ebbs and flows. The best people have all dimensions. Excellent people's stories compel you because they aren't made of success from start to finish. The bigger the trials a person overcomes, the more inspirational their story is at the end. When my life is over, I want my loved ones to look at my life, maybe read my journals and say "WOW look at how much there is here!" I want the bad to be represented as much as the good will be, because this is what I have overcome, and this is the music I've made with it.
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