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I'm reading Essayists on the Essay. That book's editor laments that the personal essay—a first-person expression of one's thoughts and feelings—has fallen out of fashion. It's seen as too much "I" and not enough "We," and today's zeitgeist is about the collective, the community, the "It takes a village" approach to life. Indeed, my writing has generally avoided the first-person.
Today, I'd like to make an exception. This post is about me but hopefully contains a useful takeaway or two for you.
I'm a sad person. I think it's genetic. By any reasonable standard, I've had a great life: career, relationships, health, money. Yet from the earliest age, like my dad, my baseline is mild sadness. It's not depression but what psychologists call dysthemia. I'm fully functional, rarely feeling depression's dark cloud of apathy, and when something good happens, I can be joyous. But my default mode is mild sadness. On a 10 scale, with 0 = depressed and 10 = euphoric, my norm is 3.5.
I'll never be like my wife, whose default is 8.5, but I look for ways to get above a 5. What works best for me is working—I'm happiest (around a 7) when productive, whether seeing a client, writing (yes, including these Psychology Today posts) or hosting my radio program. But writing about those in this article is more likely to appear self-aggrandizing than to be helpful, so here are some not-work activities that push me over a 5, albeit temporarily:
- Eating. Shallow as it is, and though I'm well aware that a moment on the lips, lifetime on the hips and am 20 pounds overweight to prove it, I don't often-enough exert portion control. When my wife and I eat out, she cuts virtually any entree in half and says, "That'll be tomorrow's dinner." In contrast, I've never met an entree I didn't finish—plus a piece or two of bread for good measure.
- Watching movies at home with my wife. I enjoy nuzzling next to her watching masters' multi-million-dollar creations for the price of a latte.
- Hugging my doggie. Like many people, I crave unconditional love but I rarely get it, perhaps because I'm intense, too often politically incorrect, and have the kind of face the Nazis caricatured in propaganda posters. None of that fazes my doggie, Einstein. And even though doggie doting is one of love's shallower forms, it makes me more content: I enjoy petting Einstein, bestowing belly rubs on him, and feeling him on my lap pressed against my chest when I'm driving.
- Listening to premier performances of great classical music. Here are my current favorites, all available for free at these You Tube links:
Evgeny Kissin and the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle performing the Grieg Piano Concerto.
Lucas Debargue's performance of Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit.
HIlary Hahn and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paarvo Jarvi performing the Mendelsohn Violin Concerto.
Lest I be seen as a complete nerd, I also enjoy listening to other music, for example,
Big Phat Band's A Few Good Men. (Check out the guitar solo that starts at the 1:45 mark.)
Idina Menzel singing Defying Gravity from Wicked.
Barbra Streisand singing I'm the Greatest Star
Dani Beem singing Maybe This Time. (I'll be accompanying her on the piano as she sings that in my upcoming show.)
The takeaway
Whether or not you're a stick in the mud like me, take a moment to think about what might move you above your baseline. Should you do more of that? And is there anything you used to do that you should bring back into your life?
Marty Nemko's new book, his 8th, is The Best of Marty Nemko.
