JUNE 2014

5281. Then I Don’t Feel So Bad

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

You know those days when all you want to do is to lie on the couch and make it go away—you’re not even really sure what it is, you just know that it makes you too tired to do anything but lie on that couch. (It doesn’t even bring you to tears, although things seem like they’re headed that way.) All you can think about is how all you can think about is lying on that couch and dreading the next time you have to be around anyone else. So there you are, lying on that couch, and suddenly the sound of some stupid pretty song or the sight of some stupid pretty scene will pass your way as if it’s come for you. And then you think maybe it really has come for you—only not just you: it’s come for everyone else on that couch, too. (It’s a big couch, though you only see your own small section of it.) You suddenly know in a flash they’re not as stupid as they seem. (For one thing, they know how we’re sad.) And once you know they’re not stupid, you know you can take it from there.

Press Play.

Note: “And then I don’t feel so bad” (Oscar Hammerstein, “My Favorite Things”).