The dance of gloriousness and wretchedness

This past weekend I went to Berkeley to have a bit of a reunion with people I studied abroad with. It was such an amazing experience having everyone together. But, selfishly, it was hard to see how much I have deviated from who I was when I was in Italy; I had realized this before seeing everyone, but was confronted with it when we all came together. 

It's hard to admit that you could go from a place to feeling so good, to a place of feeling so bad. I felt the transition happen when I was flying across the Atlantic in the United States; I feared it, and tried to fight it. At times I have succeeded in fighting it, but now I'm back to where I was. 

In Italy, I was okay with only my own approval -- I didn't need anyone else's. But, as  I got closer to coming home -- and as I came home -- I felt that I needed other people's approval to be happy. I became so addicted and caught up in trying to fulfill the expectations that people had for me. I don't know what it is about American society -- but it does that to me. In Italy it was effortless to be who I've always wanted to be, and here I have to consciously fight to be who I want to be, fight to feel what I want to feel, and fight to stop myself from being concerned of what others think of me. 

This weekend, I finished up my time in Berkeley with an incredible coffee chat with an INCREDIBLE friend of mine, who is experiencing similar feelings. We both feel uneasy about the fact that we went from feeling so connected with everything and free, to being disconnected, empty, and neutral. 

I pride myself in my ability to acknowledge what is going on, and I praise myself in my will to try and change how I'm feeling. I am actively trying to have more positive thoughts, but thinking can only take you so far. Being abroad, one of the biggest lessons that I learned is that it is OKAY to feel, and that you should never be ashamed of the way you feel. I think I'm just frustrated that -- this time last year -- I had such a sense of flow when approaching life, and I selfishly want that back. I also keep trying to approach problems with that same mentality, that they will just roll right off of me, but I have to embrace the fact that I am experiencing a different wave right now in my life. I have to learn to love it. 

That same friend I had coffee with sent me a beautiful quote by Pema Chodron, and I think it sums so much up: 

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.