But there's also a lot of smiles.
I've always thought life was funny because of that. How for one person you know, their entire world is crumbling, and for another everything is bliss, but they are existing at the same time in the same place. For example, a couple weeks ago my coworker's mother died. She was devastated. But the same week a classmate was having a baby. For one family life was beginning, for another life was drawing to a close. All at the same time. Dave and I said goodbye to some good friends this week before they moved. It's crazy to me that this weekend they will wake up in an entirely new home but everyone else will wake up in the same place they always do and go about their day like nothing has happened even though everything will be different for them. Every day at work I read about horrible crimes that occurred, but then take breaks to check e-mails for updated wedding plans from friends. There are murders to solve and crimes to prosecute at the same time that bridal showers need to be thrown and cakes need to be ordered.
For me? Right now I feel pretty in the middle. No pregnancies or new jobs or new homes or new anything really special to celebrate or smile about. But nothing tragic is going on either. I feel a little like I'm stuck in neutral, but I don't mean "stuck" in a negative way. I'm just kind of idling along and I like it.
I feel bad I can't do more to relieve some of the sadness. Maybe that's what being in the middle of sadness and smiling is all about. The ability to do one or the other depending on what the others around you need you to do.
This post is getting rambly, so I'll stop, but I hope all of you get to smile today. And that if you are experiencing sadness that it is the deep kind that eventually turns to sweetness.
1 comment:
I have thoughts like that all the time! I can remember driving home from the hospital when my mother died and looking at people in the cars next to me. I just thought, "You just never know what is going on in the lives of other people. Those two could be getting married today, the happiest day of their lives, and I'm living the saddest day of mine."
It really makes you think when someone is doing something that is annoying, like not signaling, or being absent minded, maybe there is a good reason they are like that today and I should be a little more understanding.
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