The Payoff

I am not surprised that my most-frequently-read post so far has been "Why We Need Each Other," and it is also not surprising that this post took the least amount of time to compose.  I have a tendency, as evinced by my previous post, to seek and engage with abstract material.  This tendency may make me seem stuffy, intelligent, detached, or any combination of the above.  My natural inclination toward detail, combined with a three-year love/hate affair with academic writing, accounts for this tendency.  With this post, I want to convey with absolute conviction that this admittedly affected style is not where my heart or my message really lies.  I told a friend recently that the trouble with blogs is akin to that of a photograph: it is a snapshot, a still of a kinetic something that cannot be restricted to a frame.  A writer always starts with an idea, and that idea shapes everything that follows it.  But the origin is not really the idea; it is the writer's frame of mind at the instant the idea is conceived.  Here's the problem with that: we artists (I think that includes all of us whether we realize it or not) create most when we experience negative emotions such as anger, fear, resentment, loneliness and sorrow.  We feel a need to escape or block these emotions, and art is a viable conduit.  Think about your old journals, for instance.  Were you more inclined to report positive or negative events and emotions?  When we are happy, we want to live in that happiness rather than write, sing, paint, etc. about it.  Let's reevaluate.

When I named this blog "The High Price & High Payoff of High Sensitivity" (was I high when I came up with this? kidding), I didn't even know what the payoff was.  I thought I knew, of course.  I thought it was a kind of detached wisdom, an advanced understanding beyond the grasp of those who simply *scoff* live their lives without worrying if they are doing it correctly.  How interesting that I believed the payoff of high sensitivity was in reality insensitivity, that I believed the payoff canceled out the price, leaving me with a clean blank slate upon which I could record "high art."  The truth is that the payoff of high sensitivity, of anything for that matter, is the same as the high price, and realizing this is realizing happiness.  Do not reduce your sensitivity to a detached awareness of , and by extension an ironic insensitivity to, those around you; instead, allow yourself to feel for others and express those feelings as you see fit.  I think you will find, as I am more and more every day, that the people you let in will also let you in.  And these relationships will bring you unbearable joy and unbearable pain, and yet you will bear them.  Your sensitivity is a burden and an asset all at once, and these two conflicting properties will not balance each other out.  Anyone who has ever loved knows that the good times are just as heavy as the bad.  Here's to hoping that, as the Beatles sweetly sang, we're gonna carry that weight for a long time.  As for my blog, I'll do my best to carry it with a little less weight and a lot more heart.  Thank you, as ever, for reading.