sadJus and I shall be away for a week in greenest sheep-ridden Herefordshire. Talk with you when we get back.
This week please discuss good/positive elements from your past that are presently missing in your life. Examine how they got "lost" and query whether there is any way to "find" them again -- that is to re-incorporate them into your life.
Trait: optimism
Time period: intermittently when I was young
Description: This is the optimism of security. Whatever happens, no matter how awful it seems at the time, everything will be OK. Life is fundamentally good, people are fundamentally good, all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. Sure, you get sick - but then you get better again. You lose a friend - but two more come along. There'll always be food in the larder. There'll always be somewhere to live. If nothing else, the two base steps of Maslow's hierarchy - physiological and safety needs - will always be, if not instantaneously fulfillable, at least predictably present.
Reason it escaped: 9:11. Not the events of last September, but Ecclesiastes 9:11. "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." Don't they just. If living with your eyes open isn't the most direct lesson in the futility and worthlessness of life, I don't know what is.
Can it be recovered?: No, I don't think so, and in some ways neither do I think it should be. To live is to suffer, to strive is to lose, to persist is to fail. Happiness is incidental; security illusory. This is the human condition, and if you doubt that, consider honestly the state of most people in the world. If you're not hungry, sick, in danger, you're unutterably privileged. Once you lose the illusion of safety, you know this. But of course, I so want my illusion back, because I might be able to sleep at night and not tremble in the day. Only if it can be fact, though; I'm sick with illusions.
