2002-10-22 11:34 a.m.

When I feel sad, nothing seems to help. Not even speculating as to what exactly it is that John pinches will make me feel better. Well, ok. It makes me feel a little better...

I feel depressed lately. The feeling started last Wednesday evening, and has persisted as a quiet, dull throbbing since then.

I am amazed at how I can feel so down, especially with the boundless sea of wonderful moments and great friends which I find myself swimming through.

Pain and pleasure�happiness and sadness�are so surprisingly not mutually exclusive. We are taught that happiness erases sadness, and that pleasure erases pain. Or, that if you have lots of high moments, there will not be a place in your life for the low moments.

But I have not seen that to be true.

Instead I have seen that as the highs tower higher to the heavens, the lows feel more and more like Guinness Book of World Records lows. They do not erase or exclude one another. In fact, they appear to exist symbiotically�as paradoxical as it seems, they are married to one another.

As much as I want to resist the dysphoria and challenges of the down times, a voice in the marrow of my bones reminds me that they must be there to maintain balance. There must be both yin and yang.

The hot and cold of elation and depression provide points of reference by which to compare each against the other. The up times frame the down times; the down times frame the up times.

But I can not help my short�sighted, childish reaction to feeling depressed: I want the bad taste to go away, I want to rinse it from my mouth and from my mind and from my life.


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