Saturday, October 09, 2004

Happiness and Depression

A friend once gave me a marvellous piece of advice; she referred me to a quote which states that it is useless to try to capture and relive moments in the past: Because every moment hinges on a combination of different feelings, it is unique, and hence cannot be captured in its entirety. So the conclusion was to live each day and enjoy it, instead of hoping for a moment in the past that I thought was happy.
And somehow I realised I can never quantify how happy a particular day in history was. Was the day I had dinner with my friends as happy as the day I enjoyed a brilliant piece of music, or saw a wonderful piece of eye-candy? One can never place a value on a moment, or a feeling. The only thing we might be able to do is to try to recall what it was like in this blog, or in diaries, (which is one reason I blog). Reliving it, sadly, no.
And so, even happiness and depression is transient. Every little day will bring about its share of happinesses and depressions. And sometimes in my depression I question if the happiness I'd felt earlier was truly real. Or, being happy, wonder how in the world I could be depressed. Are they the same me? I hope so, but I doubt it.
The worst thing is when I'm happy and I just want to crystallise the moment by ending it, so I would not dilute the intensity of that moment by the length of time, which would invariably lead to a lessening of that happiness: I always have this weird impression that a moment of euphoria and happiness is worth more than a sustained period of not-so-happiness, because the intensity is greater in that instant. And so I purposely try to get rid of that happiness, so I can savour that moment even more, precisely because it is gone. and then it is too late, when I find that depression is really bad, to go back to happiness.

Everything hinges on my insanity now.