My Pain Is A Bad Thing

I went to the psychiatrist this morning. On the drive home, I passed a stray dog (at a place where I couldn't pull over), a worried-looking kid being hassled by an authoritative-looking cop, and a mom breast-feeding openly. That last one made me smile, and I waved at her. I hope she didn't think I was one of those creepy people who stare at women's exposed chests when they breastfeed in public. She smiled and waved back, so maybe she just thought I was friendly.

Anyway, where I'm going with this is that life sure is a mixed bag. I reflected on that after passing the mother with her baby. Life is full of both good things and bad things. Sometimes--often--I feel like the world is a truly terrible place; that the awfulness and suffering by far overwhelm the goodness and joy. Maybe that's true, in general, but it's not true of my own specific life. Either way, it doesn't accomplish anything to focus on the tragedy of human existence. Even if the good parts are just the cliche silver lining on a horrible massive cloud, that silver lining is what I need to think about in order to keep existing effectively and enjoyably. I can't let myself get knotted up in miserable anxiety about all the bad things that happen. If I do, I'm adding to the bad things. Because my pain is a bad thing!

That's a very basic sentiment, but it's one I need reminding of: My pain is a bad thing. My joy is a good thing. I should try to live in such a way that I minimize the former and promote the latter. That's what this blog is all about, after all.

It may be that reading The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath isn't good for me. For example, look at this passage that I marked (with my pink gel pen):

I don't believe in God as a kind father in the sky. I don't believe that the meek will inherit the earth: The meek get ignored and trampled. They decompose in the bloody soil of war, of business, of art, and they rot into the warm ground under the spring rains. It is the bold, the loud-mouthed, the cruel, the vital, the revolutionaries, the mighty in arms and will, who march over the soft patient flesh that lies beneath their cleated boots.

In the margin next to this, I wrote, "So true." But hey, at least I have a pink gel pen!