Good Times, Bad Times

For a long time, I have had a distaste for the marking of occasions: weddings, graduations, anniversaries, etc. I've mentioned this here on H&R a few times. I feel a little weird about it, from time to time, to be honest with you. Most people love these occasions.

Then, just when I start to feel a little mystified by my own logical salmon swim, something always hits me, and I realize there's a derned good reason for my weirdness; that my weirdness, on this particular issue might just be a form of transcendence.

Today, for instance, a friend on Facebook summed up her life of late. She mentioned how happy she is. So . . . cool. I'm glad. There is no problem with that statement, in and of itself.

Frequently, though, friends will go the other way on Facebook. They say things like. "Goodbye, 2010. You were horrible." Or they might put up "Worst day ever." Things like that.

"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times . . ."

When I see these posts, either the negative or the positive ones, I realize that I simply don't think that way. If I really scrutinize things, I can look back at the past few years and I can say that they have been the most difficult ones of my life. But, see -- I don't do that. Not on a regular basis -- not unless I'm writing a blog post or something.

If this is a kind of transcendence, it happens because of my hard-wiring. I sure don't work at it, so I can't claim it as any kind of accomplishment borne out of meditation or something.

But if you think about it, just mentioning how perfect things are, in a Facebook status, sort of sets one up for the alternative, at least in terms of one's working mental state.While it's cool to be appreciative of the good times, it might not be such a good idea to print them up --- to share them as an occasion, if you will.

Marking the bad stuff sort of goes the other way, of course. Saying 2010 was a bad year sort of chisels it into stone. It feels too much like a lost year when it is written down and published like that.

If I look back, I do see the bad stuff, but I don't let the bad stuff smother my memory of a time period. For instance, I might remember how hard things were when my dad was sick a while ago, but I remember that as being bad -- not the whole time in which it happened. My memory says: "It was horrible when my dad was sick," but it doesn't say, "That was a horrible year."

I suppose summing things up can be good for us, at times, but maybe not when it comes down to summing up the essential quality of certain chunks of our lives.

I guess, to some extent, it comes back to thinking about "nowness." To take it a little deeper, though, the moment we find ourselves in is the only one that's really important. And the event isn't the moment -- it takes place within the moment, but it doesn't turn the moment itself into something horrible.

While I am well acquainted with "Wow -- that really sucked," I'm a stranger to, "What a horrible year I had."

Nothing winds up completely until we're dead, right? Maybe we need to reserve judgement until we're looking down from a cloud and jamming on the lyre and the rest of forever is a non-stop ride on a moonbeam surf board.

Well, I have either found something, or I'm a fruitcake.

Sorry so riffy, but it's late and I'm hungry.