Split

Try as we will, we cannot be both participant and observer at the same time without splitting ourselves.

- Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

I just read this quote from today's passage in Nepo's book (which I first encountered during a session with my former therapist in which she had me read an excerpt that reminded her of me). And it rings true, because I spend so much time thinking and analyzing that I can often find myself outside of the action rather than in the moment. I know that's not a totally new idea from me, because it's a theme I've been finding in recent months. But the way Nepo frames it as splitting ourselves, as not being totally invested in what we're doing if we're trying to look at it from the outside, objectively, resonates. Maybe it's that this idea of living in the moment is taking so long to sink in for me, and when I get stuck in my head it does, in fact, feel like I'm not really living.

Another thing that's come to my attention in the last day or so is that I have a hard time maintaining a consistent level of happiness (even when I haven't had a rough year), and the phrase "chronic low-grade depression" has been repeated a couple of times in conversation about this. So I Googled this exact phrase to find out if it is actually a recognized phenomenon and if so, whether I might be experiencing it. It turns out that there is a form of clinical depression called dysthymia, which basically consists of mild symptoms of depression sustained over a long period (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/dysthymia/DS01111). I don't know if I would actually qualify for a diagnosis, but I can relate to at least some of what is said. One thing that was mentioned in one description I read was that people with this kind of condition often function quite normally most of the time (so it may not be evident that they are depressed because it's quite possible to recall times when they seemed happy). And another thing that stuck out was that people with the condition often respond well to knowing they have an impact and mean something in the lives of the people they know. Both of these apply to me -- more than one person close to me has said, in the face of me expressing a sense of ongoing unhappiness or dissatisfaction, that they can remember me being happy at very specific times. And now, for instance, I am not unhappy. It's just the balance of happy time vs. unhappy time that seems to be off at times, and I often pass happy times with some level of detachment from them rather than really feeling the joy that they bring and experiencing an emotional connection with someone else.

Perhaps more troubling than some of my other recent posts, and with no real conclusion or happy ending, but it's what is on my mind. And I feel good about having some realization of my own problems, because it's only through self awareness that I'm able to improve. I guess that's all for tonight...