I was trying to describe that feeling the other day. The one that you get after a laughing fit and you can still feel the laughter in your body. A hangover. A laughter hangover. It's fleeting, but you can still feel it so strongly. Whoever or whatever it was that thrust you into this fit has since past, but your stomach is still a little tense, there is still a smile on your face, and maybe a tear still in the corner of your eye. Everything is ok and you're happy.
This feeling doesn't even last a second but it still feels so important. It's funny that we strive so boldly, and put so much effort into leaving darkness behind, but we allow joy to have it's own agenda. I want to reverse that. I'm sure we can all remember a time that we fought and fought for some sort cobweb to just, leave. It's impossible to focus on anything and all we can do is scramble around the room trying every light switch in an attempt to turn the lights back on. But how many times have we done that with the light. Rarely have I found myself laying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, wondering whyyyy is it, that this joy just won't. go. away...
Are we just assuming that it's supposed to be this way? That we are supposed to figure out exactly why it is that we are feeling one way before we can feel another. That by remaining loyal to our feelings we are remaining loyal to ourselves. Just me then?
I was reading about something the other day called 'negativity bias', which refers to the notion that, even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature (e.g. unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or social interactions; harmful/traumatic events) have a greater effect on one’s psychological state and process than neutral or positive things. I’ve heard that it takes up to five positive interactions to overcome one negative one. What a fight, huh? Is this only because we allow it though? We allow the negativity to run its course on our bodies, but we’re so quick to accept that positivity and joy are brief and fleeting. We sit with darkness, just to ‘feel something’ but allow the light to pass as if it were obligatory. Just imagine a world where the opposite we’re true. A world where positivity and negativity switched roles. Instead of mistrust, we feel overwhelmed by permission. Or instead of lost, we feel capable.
It sounds a little hippie dippie, but I'm pretty sure our bodies are just vessels. We ask a lot of them. And sometimes put a pretty harsh stimulus on them. We force them to do things that they 'should' enjoy. And use our minds to pull them away from things that they are calling out for. Some of my favorite lines from a Mary Oliver poem:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Let the soft animal of your body.. I think some of us get caught up in negativity because we think it's the only way we can feel. Laying on the ground wondering why is only one way to feel, true. But, I think it's time to open our minds and bodies to alternative ways of feeling. In my opinion, feeling is not an active process. Listen to Mary Oliver. Allow her permission to wash over you the way that emotions do. That. is feeling.
How do permission for feeling and negativity bias relate, you ask? Slow down and allow yourself to feel, but be conscious of negativity bias and instead choose to attach yourself to the overwhelming positivity that radiates and pulses the same way negativity does. Bank your laughter hangovers and bring them out again on a rainy day.
