My New Model for Accepting Emotional Ups and Downs
Sometimes I find myself envying my friends. Maybe they have found love and are raising a child together with a solid partner, or have a great income that allows them to live comfortably and travel whenever they want. Then they’ll tell me about whatever health problem they’re facing, and I’ll remember to be grateful that even though I am single and childless living on a modest income, I have amazing vitality and a body that can handle almost whatever life throws its way.
It’s so easy for me to be myopic and focus on what other people have that I don’t have, and ignore or discount what I have that they don’t. That’s not really an effective path towards happiness, though.
From what I can tell, everyone’s got problems. People might have a totally solid life with a loving family and a job they love with plenty of financial security, then end up in the hospital for emergency heart surgery before the age of 40 and have to get a leg amputated because of a blood clot. Then again, the friend I know that this happened to ended up with more gratitude than anything else, because he could have so easily died; even though he lost a calf and a foot, he kept his life and he and his family counted their blessings.
I have a theory that humans are designed to feel a full spectrum of emotions no matter what their situation. I first developed this theory while living in Guatemala. People down there had real problems in terms of little or no access to health care, little or no access to money, smaller and smaller plots of land to grow food on, etc…Yet when I’d come back to the U.S. for a visit, people would complain bitterly about things that seemed trivial in comparison- someone was driving too slow in front of them when they were late to work, someone offended them with an inappropriate joke, or their neighbor had an unkempt yard and it was driving them crazy.
I developed the Kris Hypothesis of Emotions: no matter how good things are, people will find something to complain about, and no matter how bad things are, people will find something to be happy about. (I’ve recently found out that psychologists call this the Happiness Set Point Theory, and have done studies to suggest that it is true.)
I imagined that even in war-torn places, people would occasionally smile, laugh and feel joy. I haven’t tested this hypothesis, because our country, while almost constantly at war, hardly ever brings it home…the closest in my lifetime was 9/11, and my Peace Corps stint started 10/11, so I didn’t experience the U.S.A. right after 9/11 except by reading about it and asking my friends about it.
I’ve also come to realize that in the U.S.A., where the complaining seems superficial and unnecessary compared to countries with “real” problems, there are underlying issues that can cause real unhappiness, even though we have so much material wealth and government support compared to many other countries like Guatemala. Lack of community, lack of nature, poor-quality stories in advertising and mass media, comparing ourselves to the few people that are richer than us rather than the billions of people that are poorer than us — I think these factors create a lot of internal unhappiness that comes out as petty whining, even though the cause of the petty whining is not so petty.
On the other hand, maybe my hypothesis is right — maybe a healthy functioning nervous system has its ups and its downs, and rather than take the ups personally and pat ourselves on the back for doing so well, then take the downs personally and try to figure out what’s causing our unhappiness so we can eradicate it from our lives, we can just notice our moods the way we notice the weather — oh, today it’s sunny, what a good day for the beach; oh, today it’s raining, I think I’ll stay home and cuddle up with my cat and a good book.
Maybe the rain in our lives — sadness, depression, fear — is as necessary to our healthy growth as rain is to our garden; maybe it’s the alternating between rain and sun — sad and happy — that results in the lushest, greenest, most vigorous personal growth.
I guess in that case, it’s not the weather that’s important, it’s the seeds we are planting in our lives. I used to think if I felt a “negative” emotion, I must have done something wrong and needed to assess and change my life. Now I have a model of reality that sees “negative” emotions as something that happen even when my life is on track, as a necessary component of being in a human body. Assuming that my moods will fluctuate, I can focus on consistently working on my intentions and goals, what I’m creating in life, no matter what the weather is…some seeds are annuals, and will flower and die in a season — my short-term projects and interests; whereas others are perennials, like a tree that keeps growing and growing — like building soil and planting trees on my land.
The hard part for me is, when it’s raining, sometimes it feels like the sun will never shine again. I just have to keep reminding myself that that is in no way true, and that the rain is doing good and necessary things, so that when the sun does come, things will grow, and grow, and grow!
