It’s funny how it’s not the lessons that they are paid
to teach you that teachers often succeed in teaching you in the end. I have
been struggling with one such lesson all my life and I believe it’s time I let
it go. Just the other day I caught myself thinking about it again – as I always
do – in mid-laugh or when I’m at my happiest. I was feeling particularly good
about my life and the world around me, filled to the brim with something like laughing
gas and a sense of mischief. I was, as the saying goes, walking on air – light and
happy and free – on that sunny and warm autumn day. And then it happened. I had
a sudden, visceral need to check myself, to sober up, to remind myself that
laughter and happiness have a terrible price to pay; the words that had been
hammered weekly into my head so many years before were once again reverberating
in my ears, berating me, warning me – rain
always comes after the sun, rain always comes after the sun, rain always comes after
the sun... And isn’t that the truth? We always paid for our laughter during
recess with tears at the lesson after being subjected to a forty-minute terror
at the hands of the scariest teacher in the world. And that feeling – that knowledge
that ultimate happiness in particular – must be avoided at all costs, because
it always ends in one way – badly – had been further reinforced in my mind (the
mind of a very impressionable and precautious child) by the book that we read
at our English lessons, by a soap opera that everyone in our country watched at
one point and, finally, most profoundly of all, by a terrible episode from my
childhood when I came home, happy and carefree, having laughed a great deal,
only to learn that my grandfather had died. It’s a knee-jerk reaction by now and
it seems there’s very little I can do about it other than put a lid on my
elation and moderate my laughter. It’s as though I suddenly have a fishbone stuck
in my throat. It’s as though that balloon of happiness suddenly gets a
puncture. It’s as though by laughing without moderation I might accidentally
trigger something bad and bring it down upon my family and myself, and that’s
when the guilt kicks in. However, I’m going to try to change that. I’ve decided
to deal with it in the only way I’m good at when it comes to dealing with my
feelings and emotions – by writing it down. It occurred to me afterwards – it’s
funny how thirty-five seems to be like such an enlightening age – that there’s
absolutely nothing wrong with feeling good about yourself and your life. There’s
nothing wrong with feeling happy and smiling and laughing and taking happy
photos in the sun and sharing them online without the fear of punishment or retribution to
follow. What is it that they say: there’s
nothing to fear but fear itself, right? Well, I’ve never been the bravest
of people, but I think it’s time to face this particular fear and to tell it to
go to hell. I want to be happy and I don’t want to look behind my back each
time I feel like laughing and lifting my feet off the ground, because I’m filled
with elation, with sensation of opportunity and possibility. I want that poisonous
dart out of my system once and for all. I want this page to absorb its negative
power, that has been plaguing me all these years, and grind it into dust. I
want to see that dust blown about until it vanishes in the wind, every last
mote… I think that there are lessons to learn and lessons to let go and this
one I am finally letting go.
P.S. A month later (almost to the day I wrote this post) my dog died...
