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My friend and I were talking about this, and I thought that you folks might have some interesting thoughts. I was reminded of this conversation while reading the topic about pulling one's self out of depression. Mary-Sue's line (from her mom's boyfriend) "Cheer up, kid, you could've been born in Vietnam" really sums it up.
It seems to me that our emotional extremes are somewhat fixed, in terms of their psychological and physical effects on ourselves. However, the range of issues we have to process is extremely variable. This is why you see starving children with smiles on their faces, and you see people crying in the streets over the death of JFK Jr.
Another example. My fiance never really had what most of us would consider "major" trauma in her childhood. No parental deaths, or molestation, or homelessness. However, what she remembers as the worst moments, and the most traumatic, were the deaths of her pets. Now, I would imagine it would almost be embarrasing to talk to a therapist about how the deaths of your kitties as a child has haunted you, but wouldn't we also agree that the depth of emotion that my fiance felt as a child when her cats died was real, and powerful?
Another issue with this: because we seem to have a fixed range of emotional feeling, regardless of circumstances, isn't that a little troubling? If you can get the same basic level of satisfaction from scoring tickets to the first showing of the Two Towers as you can from finding the cure to cancer, what pushes you to acheive "real" goals, etc?
And on the flip side, why bother with trying to find some higher, noble cause to work on, when you aren't going to get any more "real" psychological reward from it? |
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