What if how you feel makes perfect sense?
An argument for questioning your thoughts about your feelings.
Last week I wrote about the abundance of late spring and early summer — the fruit trees bursting with flower, the bright new green grass on the hillsides, the symphony of birdsong…the way the earth comes alive in vivid color, sound, smell. It’s dizzying, the beauty of it all.
I am likewise bursting with creative projects and currently up to my eyeballs in tech and previews for a world premiere musical, which I am music directing. It’s been the most challenging and rewarding music direction job I’ve ever had, as it’s included orchestrating new material for this specific cast and their talents; notating new music and editing files as we make changes daily to sculpt and shape the piece; and navigating the fine line between falling in love with the material and being willing to tear it all apart in order to put it back together in whatever way best serves the piece.
I hope I get to do more of this. After a few really good nights of sleep.
All of this is to say, I haven’t had much time to craft a post of my own although I’ve thought much about it. So instead, today I’d like to point you toward some excellent articles I’ve been reading in my spare time (ha!) that provide a preview of what I’m likely to be writing and podcasting about in the next few months.
Helen Russell recently wrote an excellent post on happiness and how your definition of happiness has a lot to do with how happy you think yourself to be. Here’s a hot take:
‘In the US I observed a real emphasis on wanting to feel happiness and avoid sadness, at all costs - far more so than in other cultures,’ she tells me when I get in touch. In East Asia, by contrast, the concept of negative feelings is rooted in Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian traditions and viewed as ‘situationally-based’ or circumstantial.
This means that individuals don’t bear the weight of their negative experiences alone.
It’s a great reminder that for those of us in America, it’s easy to think that the way our culture defines happiness is just the truth of it, but our way is not the only way. I dare say it’s not the healthiest way, either. She cited a book that I can’t wait to dig into: The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder.
For another excellent take on happiness and why the way we think about it matters, read Kwame Anthony Appiah’s recent New York Times article, “Our Idea of Happiness Has Gotten Shallow. Here’s How to Deepen It.”
A client recently shared that although they have a very good life, they have trouble feeling the joy they think they should be feeling about it all. That session got me wondering, how do they (and indeed, how do I) think they should be feeling? Not that the expectation is entirely unreasonable, and the conversation opened up some really valuable work. But I’ve been chewing on the question ever since, and I do feel that Americans have a bit of a midunderstanding about what happiness even is. This quote from author and lifehacker Tim Ferriss got to the heart of the problem, in my eyes.
“Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase…. It is the cure-all.”
Check out the whole article. Good stuff.
Have a wonderful week, feeling the way you feel and reminding yourself that how you feel is valid, and makes sense, and doesn’t have to win any contests.
I’ll leave you with a final image that sums up happiness for me today:
What do you think? I’d love to hear what these articles and concepts spark for you.
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