Douceur de vivre

Love this.

biancadevereux:

     Have you ever considered that your problem was that you feel too much?

     What do you mean?

     You’re not sad, you’re depressed. It’s not raining, it’s a thunderstorm. You are affected by the littlest things—a picture, a piece of music, a poem. Anything. It’s not normal.

     Yes. Yes, I suppose. My heart is easily moved. I feel pain where others do not. I feel what others do not. My sadness is multiplied a dozen—no, a hundred—times over. There are instances when I am paralyzed by pain. It overtakes me, the grayness, and I find that nothing will lift the weight on my heart other than the gentle concern of a friend, a kind hand on my shoulder. 

     But when I am happy, I am happy—genuinely, greatly, ridiculously so. I bask in happiness and nothing, nothing can take me down. I rejoice at the smallest blessings—the coolness of the rain, the soft whisper of a trusting cat against my leg, a hot meal on the table. I laugh at the most uncreative jokes. I write. I paint. I create music. I talk to the morose-looking dog on the sidewalk. My joy is multiplied a dozen—no, a hundred—times over. I feel life in all  its complexity, the highs of it, the lows of it, the insane beauty of everything.

     Sounds like a good way to wear your heart out.

    It is. But if my ability to feel deep sorrow grants me the ability to feel deep joy, to feel amazement, to adventure on, to be happy in every sense of the word, then you may charge me with that crime (and I would serve my sentence most gladly)—that I feel too much. That I overuse my heart. That I wear it out to its utmost capacity—to weep, to rejoice, to love.

     That I bear the knowledge of having loved with all my heart, and have felt each exquisite pang in the process—knowing all the while that I have used my heart, knowing that the gift of a heart was not in vain, that I have felt beauty and sorrow and pain—assurance that I am, in fact, human, and that my humanity would have counted for something, anything in the world, in the brief window of time that I have existed.

(Source: bianca-devereux)