same level of sadness
I’ve been thinking.
I’ve been thinking about what it takes for two people to love each other. In the real way. The unpeeling the onion way. The deep diver way.
I have a theory about one part of it.
I think it takes the same level of sadness.
Not temporary sadness, not the sadness of an ice cream cone falling to the ground or discovering there’s no toilet paper left. I mean climate sadness, ingrained sadness, the sadness of all your days added up and averaged into this day sadness. The sadness that comes from how many disappointments your father had, from not knowing how to not be shy when you were young, from the choices you wished you could make all along the way but couldn’t. From the sadness of never having kissed so and so, the sadness of hearing people yell, the sadness of the stillness in your house.
Just because it takes the same level of sadness for two people to connect doesn’t mean they have to have the same kinds of sadness. Maybe one person had a sibling die and will always have a little hole, and maybe the other person is just genetically a cloudy amalgam of their ancestors’ sadnesses; they’re more inclined to feel sad when they see a person sleeping on the street, less able to shake off the thought of someone else’s roughly dealt hand. Empathetic sadness.
But at the end of the day, for two people to feel pulled together on a long term basis, to feel like you can go underneath and see the bottom of the other person’s mind-pond, you just have to possess the same size slice of the sad soul pie chart.
And two people with the same level of sadness may not appear to be so. Two people who are 5′s on the sadness scale might seem to have entirely different dispositions. One 5 might seem like a curmudgeon, while the 5′s wife might seem sunny and amiable. But her 5ness is more of an indoor 5ness while his 5ness is more outdoor. When they’re home, he cheers up, happy just to be with her. But when they’re home she doesn’t have the distraction of stores and friends, and so her sadnesses are more apt to bubble up.
A person who’s a 6 on the sadness scale can probably not be understood by someone who’s a 4. A person who’s a 7 will probably feel lonely lying in bed with a 2. The 2 had a happier upbringing. Although not necessarily. Maybe the 2 lived through a nightmarish childhood but can’t access it anymore, has built a wall around it, and now seeks the happier pastures of 2′s and even 1′s. The 2 might hear the 7 whisper “are you still awake?” late at night, long after the lights have gone out, but the 2 is so tired, and so close to falling asleep, and somewhere in its furthest inner recesses knows that the 7 wants to share a sadness, but the 2 doesn’t want to hear it, so it pretends to be sleeping. And the 7 knows the 2 is pretending, knows the 2 can’t relate, and so it sinks into it’s 7-ness even more, the sadness of realizing this person is a 2 and not a 7 like it thought it was when they met at that party three weeks ago.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:37 am
horror doesn’t necessarily beget sadness. my grandfather always seemed to regret not passing the physical for WWII. all three of his brothers went (none permanently injured). and they seemed the happy go lucky ones. maybe it was hardcore suppression and denial; or maybe, once friends get blown apart right next to you, nothing after those events seem anything not to feel totally awesome about: lost my job today, but no mortar rounds came in. so much better than a break even day for a combat vet. obviously other vets have differing effects of the experience. that’s what makes human psychology such a deranged clusterfuck.
but whatever number you drew sadness wise, your bound to run into several others of similar magnitude. odds are odds; even though they do tend to savagely favor the house.
so be good, for goodness sake, whoa, somebody’s coming… oh, wait, i guess not for you though. sorry, didn’t mean to get your hopes up.
of course there’s no reason you can’t chat him up (been watching too many Keira Knightley interviews), try to gauge his sad score. be careful though. i hear he’s a player. who wouldn’t be, heads a company second only to Walmart in global distribution, with a super fast magic powered sled. a little heavy, but a great catch regardless.
good luck. feel good. look on the bright side and stuff.
good night and good god…we’re going to have a president that uses real words correctly.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:38 am
mmm…sadness. i love gray days, the smell of rainy-wet city pavement, and esteban on QVC. I know sadness intimately, but i don’t know if mine is as epic as it could be. I find so much bleak humor in it, I’m not sure if it actually registers on the scale anymore. some days an apophis meteor collision doesn’t seem so bad, then there are other days when i just don’t want the world to end before i can watch the end of the 99th showing of bloodsport on the spike channel. i see your point, but I think love depends on kindness. as dumb as that sounds, I think the scale of honest human kindness is what will keep it together. it’s the balance between wanting to be a greedy maniac and a peacefully kind buddha-man or woman.
November 19th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Is this the proverbial, “misery loves company”? But seriously, I would suggest that the “sadness” you describe is one of the many significant things we discover in a purposeful (and I emphasize “pruposeful”, since many never seem to get there or care to) journey towards self-awareness. Any long term emotional relationship requires the empathy of the other and not just for their strengths but also for their weaknesses.
November 20th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
hey jessi you may be in the comic biz, but when I read your writing, like this piece about sadness, you remind me of rilke… you have a strong piscean energy inside you that colors your perspective in deep violet pastel hues of feeling…when I looked up your birthyear I found that you were a pisces (chinese astrology), now I don’t know if you believe in what the ancients called the queen of the sciences, but have you ever considered putting your thoughts into verse? I bet there’s a talent there that would surprise you……
November 21st, 2008 at 7:23 am
Interesting post. What do you think of happiness levels being matched?
I don’t know that I have a great way of articulating love, maybe because I don’t understand it. In my marriage, the love is part attraction, part someone who is matched for your vision of the future, and the last piece is a choice to accept everything this person gives you. In my view, radical acceptance is key. Of course, it only is effective when both folks are matched with the acceptance.
November 21st, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I think you really nail it on the head when you say ‘…someone who is matched for your vision of the future…’, because that to me means you’re sharing the same ideal as your partner & that colors, informs & influences everything else that’s going to happen in that union, so much so that everything if you really analyze it can be traced back to it…I hate to use a sports analogy, but to put it in its most simplist ic form, if a team has half its players playing defense when it should be playing offense & half of its players playing offense when it should be playing defense, you’re gonna have a losing outcome. That just opens the door toa host of misunderstandings, miscommunications & wrongheaded reactions. I like your idea of radical acceptance–that to me means a quality of unconditional loving–if marriage was a horse race (sorry for the mundane analogy) you’d be a triple crown winner…I mean , the greater your ability to love the less likely your marriage is going to end up a petty ego-game of one upmanship or a contest of wills where the only winners are the divorce lawyers who end up settling the case…I don’t know why I’m using so many sporting terms in this, but since I am I’ll end it on an appropriate note: if you start with a shared vision & radical acceptance with your partner it will truly enable you to have that rarest of accomplishments–a happy marriage which really is the greatest game in town….
November 21st, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Sadness really makes one to see the beauty in others. Even if we don’t mix or match, there is still a level of compassion that we share with those we don’t understand or know very well.
Use sadness to connect– not just with people, with everything– and you’ll see what I mean…
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:35 am
youtube.com/watch?v=WXwygaIjG08