One Good Day

I was just pondering the “one good day” phenomenon, before you posted this.

I was thinking about how, like clockwork, every time i have “a good day,” something inevitably happens to make me feel terrible again… sometimes before that “one good day” is even finished.

Then the concept of contrast occurred to me. Maybe my “good days” aren’t really that good, but because life has minimized my expectations, just about any non-terrible day seems “good,” and makes me feel “good,” and then i feel more good than i should, about small things… and then after feeling “so good,” i am quickly returned to the misery i’m usually accustomed to, and it feels far worse, because i stopped feeling it for a little while. It’s not necessarily that anything is worse than before the good day… but that it feels worse going back to it, after something broke the pattern of normalcy.

And then i started wondering if maybe that’s part of why i avoid even “good” things. I don’t want to experience that increased, contrasted discomfort, upon returning to the normal lows, on a regular basis… not to mention “ever.”

The spikes almost always manifest a following valley… but the valleys almost never make a spike. Feeling bad for a while, doesn’t usually make me feel better afterward… but feeling good for a while, almost always makes me feel worse, afterward.

I don’t know how to make the baseline better, so that returning to it doesn’t hurt too much. It seems like every attempt to improve, only ever results in a minimal spike, followed by a maximal valley… which eventually rises back to the baseline. It seems like every effort to improve, only ends up hurting me more… achieving quite a lot of pain, but without ever actually gaining anything.

But then there was something else the OP caused me to want to say, and that is that it’s not up to anyone else to tell you “what’s the point.” “The point,” is something you have to figure out for yourself, and it’s probably different for just about everyone. “The point,” has to be Your point. Figure out what matters to you, and try to do what you can, while you can. That’s about as good of an answer you’re going to get, in regard to the “What’s the point?” question. Figure out your point. Asking other people is probably not going to yield an answer that works for you.

I also remember what it was like to be enthusiastic about life… but i also realize that much of that enthusiasm required me to be ignorant of things i’ve since learned, that i had to experience extended despair, and trudge through extended and onerous contemplation, in order to learn. Now that i know, ignorance-based enthusiasm cannot be attained, and cannot be my goal. Learning and accepting both myself and reality, has “raised the bar,” and increased the minimum requirements of my life… when i was already struggling to meet and surpass the previously lesser ones.