My eye bags are gone

What felt like the end of the world turned out to be nothing more than a temporary inconvenience. As these things usually are. As I tend, too often, to forget.

Today, I drove home from work and the sky was blue, when it had been cloudy and gray just a few hours before. I cooked dinner, did all my dishes, packed lunch for tomorrow and still the sun was up and the day unfinished. I pondered over whether I should go on a walk and buy myself gelato. The gelato shop ended up being closed, but this didn't bother me, I ate two-bite brownies instead. In fact, I'm eating brownies now; I've allowed myself to stop counting the number bites I have already taken. More than two.

Later, I was lying in bed, and I stumbled on an interpretation of Bohemian Rhapsody by a young (and very talented) girl. And it hit me as suddenly as the realization of yesterday's eye bags did. That there are things that are good absolutely, beautiful unconditionally. The colour of sunlight over closed eyelids, warm tea and good books, and old friends, the kind that will pick up a call at 8AM to give you a pep talk before work, and then proceed to thank you for calling them, when you know they've been trying their best to put on a non-sleepy voice this entire time.

There's a lot to be thankful for, and it's so easy to forget. The simplest things often are.

I am reminded of the first line in Anna Karenina:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Unhappiness is so complicated. One could be unhappy for a million and one reasons, and feel it in a million and one ways.

When patients tell me about their pain, they could tell me that it hurts when they breathe, that it feels like a squeezing kind of pain, not dull, not stabbing, and that is located right in this very small area that I could replicate if I pressed hard enough. Even through language, pain is so specific, because there is such a dire need for it to be understood and fixed.

When patient tell me they are well, all it takes is once sentence.

There is very little to decipher when it comes to happiness. I am happy. You are happy. Therefore we share the same happiness. Why do we not have the same language to describe happiness as we do for unhappiness? Perhaps because when one is happy, it is sufficient to just feel it. There is value in this kind of unromantic simplicity.