feeling sad twice, once for no good reason

(I cheated a little and actually finished this on November 4, but I wrote most of it on the 2nd and 3rd so dated it as such)

So this might be a little long and not make a whole lot of sense, but bear with me...

Yesterday I mentioned some thoughts inspired by coffee on the bus. ...Let us look in at the scene: A tired but cookie-filled young woman sits semi-sulkily on the bus holding a cup of coffee in one mittened hand and a journal article about a new anti-viral drug in the other. Her stop is coming up, so she stuffs the article into her huge purse - she hasn't really been understanding the words her eyes passed over anyways. The bus stops. A young man enters the bus. He is wearing a faded coat, carrying a foil-covered dish, and looking pleasant as he puts bills into the fare machine. Don't ask what, but something about this man makes the woman pause...and want to cry.

Here she is, fairly grumpy over having been left by the previous bus, sitting with her warm cup of expensive and unnecessary coffee, taking the bus with a bus pass that costs her absolutely nothing except bearing the title of "graduate student," which means she probably works way less and gets paid way more than the man she has just encountered. Doesn't she realize that everything in her mildly enviable life has been handed to her? Money to spend on frivolous things, the option for laziness at work, a car, clothes, friends, a family that cares, an education.

I think of a song that came out years ago by Everlast called "What it's Like." It states, very wisely..."You know where it ends it usually depends on where you start." So true, so true.

Actually...let me pause there and reflect on that statement a little bit more. Excuse the tangent:

• This is true for your socioeconomic standing. I (the one on the bus with the coffee in case you didn't notice) was born into a suburbian family, grew up with suburbian money, went to suburbian schools, long to live in a suburb again - basically, I was fortunate enough to begin with more than I needed for life. Other people are born into different situations - poor parents give birth to poor babies who grow up with in resource-poor homes and get educated in poor schools, etc. A generalization, I realize, but wouldn't you agree?
• And what about religion. Recently I had this discussion with someone (I've had it before over and over again...) - a person grows up going to church or temple or synagogue or nowhere and tends to adopt the religious beliefs of his or her parents. I feel there comes a time in everybody's life when they stop and say "Hey, wait a minute - why is it that I believe these things I say I believe?", and upon further investigation they realize that they never really thought much about those things they grew up knowing to be true, never considered that possibility that they might be wrong or not the best possible way. But if people don't stop and think much about it...they'll often just jump back on and say "Well, it seems to be working okay, so I'll just keep doing it the way I've always done." I know, this isn't what always happens, but often 'tis.

Back to the point.

Instead of having a cushy life like our ungrateful "heroine," the man on the bus probably has worked hard all day, all his life. He probably is satisfied with the warm food he hungrily sniffs through the foil as he takes his seat on the bus. He probably is looking forward to arriving home so he can eat his hard-earned food - he hasn't been disillusioned into demanding that he eat it on the bus right then and there or been spoiled into being able to waltz into a talk about a line of work that has nothing to do with his own to grab coffee and cookies at 4 in the afternoon on any given day (I was cookie-filled because I went to a talk on predator-prey relationships between a few species in the Rocky Mountains...and there were cookies so of course I HAD to eat some). He has so much less, but he is wonderfully content. Not only that, but he is satisfied with himself because he knows he has done good work and has done it with integrity.

So, that's "the way it is" that was revealed to me on Monday. So what? Well, I was overcome with guilt about my disgusting ability to take everything for granted, for one. But, I realized it wasn't really enough to KNOW that unless it spurred some sort of change so I won't have to feel that way again. And so, in the end, I was stuck. Because what am I supposed to do? Work diligently, sure. But what else? Give away everything I own? Help inner-city kids with their schoolwork? Not drink coffee? Not eat cookies?

Is it possible to truly ENJOY the luxuries of life when you know you don't deserve them? I often would have answered that the answer is just the opposite - you enjoy them more when you DO realize that you don't deserve them. But what about that GUILT, that overwhelming sense of "this is not fair - I should not be enjoying myself when there are so many people suffering"?

That's the end of that thought. In the end, I supposed I decided not to think about it anymore. More questions than answers. And no, I didn't suddenly become disciplined and 100% productive at every moment at work.

PART TWO:
One thing I really do not like about the internet is that people who communicate on it are very capable of not telling you so very much about themselves. For example, it drives me nuts when I find out from a website that something is deeply troubling somebody I care about, but they fail to mention what that deeply troubling thing is. Such is the case right now. It makes me worry and have a vey active imagination all of a sudden. "Maybe this happened, and that led to this - and then (oh no!) x, y, z occurred!!" or "Well, I'm sure whatever it is really isn't that bad, because if it was, the person would explain it more or at least call me and tell me about it." or "I wonder if I did something to make this person deeply troubled. Oh dear. What could I have done? How ever can I fix it if I don't know what I did?"

Probably when people do this online the rest of the story is known by the people who have caused the deep troubling (although sometimes I can't be too sure, since I've been involved in cases when one party is utterly oblivious to the other party's upsettedness), and they're just telling those people that they're upset. It's like an inside joke. But it's not a joke. It's serious. An inside-out joke?