From The Daily Dialogue
From The Daily Dialogue
Broadcast of 9/27/98
Subject: [DailyDialogue #269] Feeling Grumpy
"Today we seem to prefer the word depression over sadness and melancholy. Perhaps its Latin form sounds more clinical and serious. But there was a time, five or six hundred years ago, when melancholy was identified with the Roman god Saturn. To be depressed was to be 'in Saturn,' … The depressed person sometimes thinks that the good times are all past, that there is nothing left for the present or the future...Sometimes we associate depression with literal aging, but it is more precisely a matter of the soul's aging."
-- Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul
A light rain was falling as we set out the tent near the cedar tree. We boiled water for a freeze-dried dinner and ate in the rain. The nearby stream offered a continuous backdrop of moving-water-sounds as we settled into our small tent for the night. In the dark, the rain was making a steady dripping sound on our rain fly.
I awakened several times during the night to notice that the rain was holding steady and that my body was not adjusting well to sleeping on the ground. By morning, my neck and back were seriously stiff and sore and the rain was continuing as before. Small irritations sometimes add together and prompt a grumpy, grouchy, and generally foul mood. It has ALSO been my experience that small irritations sometimes enhance an experience and render it more memorable.
When small irritations seem to prompt a foul mood, there is usually something deeper that is developing in my life.
Experiment: Dialogue with your partner about a memorable time when minor irritations seemed to quicken your desire to have a great time in spite of it all.
Affirmation: We are using times of foul mood to draw us deeper into our soul’s work.
The Daily Dialogue is published each day of 1998 by e-mail. Copyright 1998, Eddy Brame and Marty Crouch, All rights reserved.
