Skip to main content

Fine Line

X.J Kennedy's poem Seven Deadly Virtues makes you think about the fine diving line between vice and virtue. What he says of good cheer is rather disturbing for anyone who has been through periods of despondency:

Good Cheer
When grief and gloom are what you want, good cheer is nothing but a big pain in the rear.


I have known how it takes an effort to get excited about the beautiful weather outside, leave the familiar confines of the well worn couch to make the best of what the day has to offer. I don't know that I have wanted "grief and gloom" at times like this, but have lacked what it takes to bring "good cheer" on spontaneously.


The craving for uninterrupted quietness and to be left alone was far more than any desire to seize the day. I suffered knowing that my mood would permeate J's diminishing her natural joie de vivre, that I would feel guilty long after for it. I would want to undo that day, that hour, have made some happy memories with my child.

But when the neighbor's kid knocked on the door to ask "Mommy wants to know if you and J would like to come watch my soccer game", something inside snapped as if the strands of gloom were ripped apart by an unexpected burst of happiness - the smiling face of a little girl who wanted me to become part of her day.

Comments

ggop said…
I can totally relate to the not feeling like leaving the couch to enjoy the beautiful weather.
But I'm glad the little girl made you snap out of it! You never regret it later. Its sort of like exercise or a safe yoga class :-)
gg
Musings.. said…
Have felt exactly the same before.. Well written..glad you left the couch!

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...