Infinite
I had to stop doing homework. I was burned, and all of the symbols and operators and functions were looking the same. By doing so, I put myself under a deadline, again. No surprise, there.
I'll have to study on my lunch break tomorrow so I can write all of the code when I get home. I hope I'm blindsided by inspiration.
Tomorrow is February 1. It sounds ridiculous that I should care about calendar dates. The measurement of time is so much bullshit that we sheep-like creatures rely upon to measure our existence. A date on a calendar means nothing to a person who is unaware of the passage of time. I know. I lived that way, once. I missed my birthday by four days because I had no idea what day it was. I was unemployed, and only vaguely aware of night and day by the amount of light and the difference in the wild creatures that I observed. I slept when I felt the need to, and that was rarely. I was in a house with no clocks and no calendars, and spent most of my time outside or in bed.
It was an odd feeling, not knowing the day of the week. I was so spun away from my own center.
I also once had a boyfriend who would swear that he could feel the difference between one geographic state and another when he drove through. He swore he would never go to Utah because he didn't like the energy there. He was sure that a geo-political boundary had the power to contain the particular energy of a state. My Christmas visit to see my parents without him was one of the first chances I had to decide that I was not keeping him around much longer. We split shortly afterward. But, I always told him that he was insane to think that he could feel that imaginary line across the land. So ludicrous; and he was always crazy and unreasonable.
Yet, here I am. I am doing the same thing with a line in time. Am I equally crazy and unreasonable? I don't know.
Happiness--the full spike in mood that equates to joy--is a limited thing. A person doesn't stay happy all the time, and there is always a backstop to mirth. If you ask a happy person, there is always something more that they could have, which is the thing that curtails bliss and makes it finite. If happiness was not limited, people would have no reason to invent heaven. There'd be nothing to look forward to, and no comfort for us when our loved ones died.
Sadness, on the other hand, is infinite. It is a yawning black chasm into which a person can fall for the entirety of their existence. Sadness is rarely negated by moments of happiness. It is merely lessened. Sadness is the dominant trait; Happiness, recessive. Sadness underlies all things in melancholy tugs and distrustful whispers. People who are happy fear the end of happiness, and are therefore experiencing sadness-in-waiting.
It's such a grim simplification of life, yet it feels true. I find the grim facts to be far more believable, today. Yet, I am not truly sad.
I am experiencing sadness-in-waiting.
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