Last night at dinner I had a long conversation with a friend who says he doesn't know any married couples who are truly happy. Upon further discussion I realized he meant that no one in a marriage is happy 100% of the time. Once I understood his premise, I had to agree with him. You see I don't believe anyone in this human experience can sustain happiness 100% of the time but we can string together enough moments of happiness to be happy most of the time. So why can't we be happy all the time? Because without some adversity, or contrast to what we want in our life, we would not grow. A perfect metaphor for this is in the book "The Art of Being" by Dennis Merritt, where he discusses the biosphere experiments where scientists created an environment that imitated earth and lived in these closed systems for several years at a time. In one of the first experiments the scientists found that trees would grow only to a certain point then fall over. Upon further investigation they found that the trees had too shallow a root system to sustain their height and weight which they then found was caused by the lack of wind in the biosphere. It seems trees need wind to stimulate their deep root growth. Wind is their adversity or contrast.
Just as the trees need the wind to dig their roots deep into the soil, humans need adversity and contrast in order to push our roots deeper too. As with the marriage example above, couples need some adversity and contrast in order to deepen the roots of their relationship. For me looking back, the adversity and contrast in my life has helped me deepen my faith in my Higher Power. But our culture teaches us at a very early age that adversity is bad and that we should beat ourselves up if we don't have what we want (perfect career, perfect weight, perfect relationship) and that we should hope and pray to not have any adversity in our lives (although I don't know anyone who hasn't had some in their life). So today, what I'm learning is that when I feel a negative emotion, it is because I'm experiencing either an adversity or a contrast (what I don't want). So now, I'm trying to thank the contrast when it arrives for it is telling me not only what I don't want in my life and helping me focus on what I do want, it's also helping me grow my roots deeper. Because with deeper roots I can let go of my anxieties and fears a little more each day and truly enjoy the ride. That's my happiness!
i'm sure there is some eastern proverb to back this up...something about pleasure and pain, maybe? the yin and the yang perhaps?...but how would we really know and appreciate happiness if we never once experienced sadness, a letdown or adversity to some degree? in my life, i've found the peaks of happiness often come after the valleys of despair...but then again, i might just be bi-polar, LOL!
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