Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty: And Does it Really Matter?
Embracing The Duality of Energy
During January of 2017, I presented an unpublished paper at the Southern Humanities Council Conference, in Louisville, Kentucky titled: The Quest for Wholeness: Embracing the Duality of Energy. I defined the duality of energy as the yin and the yang, the positive and negative aspects about ourselves that comprise the totality of ourselves.
Prior to my presentation, I conducted a Google search using the keyword phrase Quotes About Happiness and got 50,800,000 results. I also conducted a Google search on Quotes Related to Sadness and Depression and conversely got 775,000 results.
Last week, I decided to do a similar search, using different but similar phrases. For Quotes About Being Happy, I got 937,000,000 and for Quotes About being Sad I got 381,000,000 results.
Though I got a greater number of results in similar categories during this internet search, it did nothing to change my belief from 2017, one that has been prevalent in our society for as long as I can remember:
Happiness is the key to achieving functionality, productivity and fulfillment.
On the other hand, emotions that are counterproductive to the pursuit of happiness such as depression, anxiety, and anger are to be either devoutly dismissed or heavily medicated.
Being perpetually happy does not guarantee that we will achieve functionality, productivity, or fulfillment. In fact, I believe that achieving these qualities actually involves a willingness on our parts, to embrace our shadow selves or those negative qualities, which are perceived by others as counterproductive to functionality, productivity, and fulfillment. However, I believe that we become whole when we are able to accept our shadow selves for the hidden gifts that they contain.
Embracing our “shadow selves” allows us to live a life that is characterized by the authenticity of emotional expression while accepting that happiness alone doesn’t define who we are.
Chasing Light
In her brilliant book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, Debbie Ford developed specific personal exercises to help the reader clearly identify their shadow and discover its hidden gifts. She builds on the work of Carl Jung, who first developed the concept of the shadow element. Ford also discusses the personal challenges that motivated her to embrace the shadow element in her life.
One of the many things that I learned from Ford is that if we don’t acknowledge the negative traits that we see in others as being a part of ourselves, then the universe will keep bringing people into our lives that possess the very qualities that we have denounced.
For several years, I presented a variety of different workshops for a national bereavement organization. There was one person whom I disliked intensely because of his egotistical demeanor and what I perceived to be exploitation of emotionally vulnerable individuals to promote his own agenda. His presence personally and on social media interrupted my serenity. I needed to determine why this person was “pushing my buttons”. Using Debbie Ford as my guide, I asked myself if I had ever been taken over by ego and if at some time in my life, I had ever been manipulative. It turns out that I manifested both of those qualities at various times in my life. Because I was able to acknowledge in me what I saw in him, I was able to manage my reactions and therefore not let his physical and virtual presence affect me. I, therefore, was able to view him and his perceived flaws as being of service to me.
During challenging times in our lives, it is even more important that we acknowledge the hidden gifts of our shadow selves to work through those challenges. They are and will always be a part of who we are, so why deny its existence? We can’t achieve wholeness without embracing our imperfections. Rejecting our imperfections means that we are rejecting an important part of who we are, all because the importance of happiness has been deemed as so crucial to our existence.
Me, Myself and My Shadow
The path that is made known to us after loss is fraught with many emotional ups and downs, uncertainty about the present, and fear of what the future holds. The path we walk is a circular one, where the raw pain of grief can permeate our very being, without warning, regardless of the amount of time that passed. In early grief, pain is not seen as an ally, it is seen as an enemy that needs to be defeated by ignoring or suppressing it.
Approximately two-and-one-half years after the death of my 18-year-old daughter Jeannine(Jeannine died on March 1, 2003 of a rare form of cancer), I decided that I was going to stop walking the path of a parent who had experienced the death of a child. I stopped attending my bereaved parent support group and focused on full-time work and part-time teaching. I was tired of the pain, sadness, and anger that I regularly experienced after Jeannine’s death. I wanted God to restore my life to the way it was before Jeannine’s death.
Running away from my grief, while cutting off the support from other grieving parents only made me more miserable. I slowly began to realize that I needed to embrace my identity as a grieving parent in order to achieve some sense of meaning and purpose in my new world. Over time, I began to realize that my pain could teach me about resilience, my sadness could lead to compassion, and my anger could morph into passion for those people and pursuits that were meaningful to me. I don’t subscribe to the glass is either half full or half empty belief about happiness. My glass is a mosaic full of all of the emotions that make me who I am, in the aftermath of trauma.
Happiness Redefined
While pondering the importance than many in society place on happiness, I discovered this excerpt from an article by Augusten Burroughs titled, How to Live Unhappily Ever After:
“I am not a happy person. There are things that do make me experience joy. But joy is a fleeting emotion, like a very long sneeze. A lot of the time what I feel is interested. Or I feel melancholy. And I also frequently feel tenderness, annoyance, confusion, fear and hopelessness. It doesn’t add up to anything I would call happiness. But what I’m thinking is, is that so terrible?”
I, like Augusten Burroughs, don’t consider myself to be a happy person today, at least according to many of society’s expectations. I have, perhaps as much by necessity as well as choice, learned to embrace a wide variety of emotions in order to achieve a greater understanding about myself and the world around me. Everything, good and bad, has been of service by teaching me more about myself than I could have ever imagined.
Had I committed myself totally to the pursuit of happiness, and not honored other aspects of my experience, I would not have been able to achieve growth following the death of my daughter Jeannine. I would not have been able to truly understand the significance of being whole. Today, my quest for wholeness outweighs my pursuit of happiness.
The individuals whom I choose to call my friends today are not by definition happy, but they are genuine. They allow for their full range of emotional experiences to be expressed at any given moment of time. Their genuineness and willingness to be vulnerable in the moment is not only beautiful to witness but inspires me to continue to embrace the totality of my emotions, and the totality of myself.
