Nobody is born happy
A study suggests that sadness might be linked to increased "chitchat" between two areas of the brain.
Hey buttercakes,
It finally rained.
I don't think you understand my excitement about this enough. It has been unusually hot this time of the year here. So hot that I had wound up being frustrated with the weather. It seemed like the sky was teasing us somehow, the clouds would grow dark, thunder would rumble, streaks of lighting, heavy wind blew, a faint drizzle would start or it spared us nothing at all. Then just as it had started, it ended abruptly.
Whenever this would happen, I would imagine a rainmaker and God having a fight about something absurd, or that an elephant was having an induced birth.
The rain did things to me;
#1 It made me curl up in bed with a book, pleasantly rereading Purple Hibiscus. And then strolling out to get a little guilty pleasure of peppered chicken suya.
#2 For a brief moment, I indulged in the idea that the heavy downpour had washed out all my pent up frustrations and sadness this week.
Okay, maybe not. But this was the saddest bit I have been in a while. I was sad about a lot of things. Most prominent of all, was being sad about being too sad to do my home workout routine for a 6 day streak. I was frustrated with work and how all I have done is work during this quarantine. While I like that I am learning so much from work, I would like to do other seemingly mundane things. Like write the many stories in my head, read the many books I have queued up on my reading app, finish my UX writing course like I had planned.
This is how sadness happens. It catches you unaware and expects you to figure out what to make out of that feeling. Sometimes our response to sadness is to say "be happy" in a patronising manner, tout a to-do list on "how to be happy" or my personal favorite, lie to ourselves that we only make out time for "positive or good vibes."
Sadness doesn't work like that, not even remotely. Like any other feeling, sadness demands to be felt. And it's not even a negative feeling, it's just a feeling, period.
Source: PsychCentral
I am recognizing this now, that I need to acknowledge that this feeling is valid, allow myself to feel it and then work on not reacting in irrational ways. I might be doing a bad job of this, who knows but anyway what do you do when you get sad. Writing helps me, what helps you.
You can always reply to this email. I read every reply.
Now to the good stuff 🙃
Music. Baking bread. In this piece for New York Times, Jennifer shares some of the ways she deals with her sadness.
Sometimes sadness has a way of making us sit with our emotions and create stuff. Bob Dylan, one of my favorite song writers made the best album of his career after coming back from a bout of depression. This is why I find this article on how feeling sad makes us more creative, quite interesting.
Here's why sad people listen to sad music, with a playlist of classic sad songs to listen to.
I know parents like to talk about wanting kids to grow up and leave but what happens when they finally leave. Here's how this ordinary sadness feels like.
See you next weekend.
Love,
M.