THE MOOD

Sadness, Grief, The blues,
Self-pity, Melancholy, Regret, Remorse, Low, Down-trodden and Morose. These are
but a few of the words that come to mind when trying to describe my mood for
past two weeks. Now before you call a suicide prevention number on my behalf,
please know that I am aware that the condition these words describe will pass (and they have).

The problem as I see it is not
the condition but the feeling implied by my gloomy list of words (I can't believe I forgot to put
'gloomy' on the list). The feeling is so bad that my tendency in the past
has been to feel anger whenever sadness threatened, for the simple reason that
sadness feels worse than anger. Anger at least can flow outwards. Sadness flows
in. On the other hand, anger generates road rage and getting your head caved in
by a guy in a pickup truck with a tire iron, while sadness inspires you to
watch unbelievably bad TV to distract you from feeling sadness.

And, of course, both sadness
and anger stem from fear, fear of losing what you have or fear of not getting
what you want. And fear stems from the tightly-held belief that what you have
and/or want is even remotely important. To be fearless is to be free from
desire, even desire for one's own life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not even close
to that consciousness. Heck, as soon as I done with this entry I'll probably go
watch TLC and hope to see some show that exploits little girls.