Another song, another post! (If you want to listen while you read, here it is – sung by Rosemary Clooney):
What got me thinking about this today was the realisation that things feel a lot sweeter when we’ve experienced the opposite emotion. For instance, doesn’t a windfall feel better when we’ve been short of money for a while? Isn’t a kind word or laughter all the more precious when we’ve been feeling blue?
Life would be pretty flat if we were to be on an even keel all the time. It’s through the swings that we get a sense of ourselves. Like a pendulum we get to experience our furthest reaches and explore what works for us and what doesn’t. It’s a constant state of refinement and fine-tuning. Each time we reach an extreme and feel discomfort, we learn that that is our boundary and we adjust. Coming back to centre gives relief – joy even – but it’s not long before we want to test our boundaries again. Because that is the essence of being human – expansion. All living things have the innate and automatic urge to grow. It’s not something we can fight for long. If we do fight our own growth then eventually Nature will force us to expand, even despite ourselves. For me this is what illness is – we resist and Nature says, “Right – off to bed with you until you get that something has to shift here”.
So don’t fight the ups and downs, the to-ing and fro-ing. Instead I suggest we welcome the swings and congratulate ourselves for being active in our own evolution – this delicious journey of human-being-ness.
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