So much fun to have, so much to explore

 I’m quite familiar with the exciting feeling of exuberance, the warm sense of tingling and excitement on a summer evening as I head out to play in the neighborhood park. The world is full of adventure and blooming with ecstatic plants and creatures, ecstatic just like me. The world seems perfect, and I feel nothing but joy as I climb and sit down upon the lowest branch of the neighborhood tree. At least superficially, I feel satisfied, as if I were in paradise. The feeling doesn’t peak for long, and goes down after a few minutes, but while it lasts, boy does it feel heavenly.

I’m also quite familiar with a deep sense of drudgery and gloom--a mixture of desperation, disappointment, and emptiness, the darkness on a dull winter night as I recall the amount of work on my todo list that I don’t want to do. The world seems devoid of pleasure, and as long as I know that my todo list is full, my mind cannot accept the feeling of cheer. I am eager to drift into the limbo of sleep, and am grateful as the gentle soporific hand closes my eyelids and calms me, for I wish not to be awake, because to be awake is to feel the inescapable misery. At least superifically, I feel miserable, as if I were in hell. The feeling doesn’t peak for long, and goes down after a few minutes, but while it lasts, boy does it feel terrible.

Two polar ends of the same spectrum of emotion--that of happiness. And how vastly different they seem to me. What a large impact they have upon my motivation, wishes, and thoughts. How miserable is this world, that control over these feelings feels so far removed from us. A result on a test, the sudden sickness or death of a close friend or family member, an unexpected complement or berating from a parent, a random act of kindness or spite. Sometimes seemingly nothing at all. At seemingly random intervals of time, at the snap of a finger, the unpredictable controller of this world can make us at times, so unexplainably happy, at others so miserably sad. We don’t know, and find it hard to understand ourselves why we have been placed in the predicament or dilemma that we have. We are surprised at what we have done to deserve such a glorious feeling of happiness.

God plays with us as we play with ants’ hills or hummingbirds’ nests. Indifferently.