The Art of Feeling F*cking Awesome
I recently read Kay Redfield Jamison's book Exuberance, a poetic and frenetic look into the infectious emotional state of exuberance. While there is no shortage of literature dedicated to depression, very little can be found on the positive and productive highs Jamison refers to as:
Kinetic and unrestrained, joyful, irrepressible. It is not happiness, although they share a border. It is instead, at its core, a more restless, billowing state...exuberance leaps, bubbles and overflows.
Jamison, Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and author of the best-selling memoir, An Unquiet Mind, frequently explores the highs, lows and alley ways of mania and depression (which she struggles with.) It's hard not to lose yourself in her writing - it is both scientific and deeply emotional; it oozes with exuberance. After reading the book, I couldn't stop talking about it for weeks afterwards, wide-eyed and dizzy from excitement.
Reading Jamison's book was an incredibly moving experience for me. It has inspired me to take a step back in my life (which is too often punctuated by periods of intense depression) and instead celebrate those crazy, amazing, vertigo-inducing moments of feeling f*cking awesome. Sometimes it comes out of the blue, other times it's inspired by music, art, an amazing conversation, etc. Whether it's mundane or flat out cheesy - whenever the world becomes so uncontrollably beautiful that words and thoughts can't keep up with you - I call those sparkling, shining moments, in which the I feel most alive: The Glowing Hours.*
*Borrowed from Chapter 4 of Exuberance (Vintage Books, 2005 edition).
Kinetic and unrestrained, joyful, irrepressible. It is not happiness, although they share a border. It is instead, at its core, a more restless, billowing state...exuberance leaps, bubbles and overflows.
Jamison, Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and author of the best-selling memoir, An Unquiet Mind, frequently explores the highs, lows and alley ways of mania and depression (which she struggles with.) It's hard not to lose yourself in her writing - it is both scientific and deeply emotional; it oozes with exuberance. After reading the book, I couldn't stop talking about it for weeks afterwards, wide-eyed and dizzy from excitement.
Reading Jamison's book was an incredibly moving experience for me. It has inspired me to take a step back in my life (which is too often punctuated by periods of intense depression) and instead celebrate those crazy, amazing, vertigo-inducing moments of feeling f*cking awesome. Sometimes it comes out of the blue, other times it's inspired by music, art, an amazing conversation, etc. Whether it's mundane or flat out cheesy - whenever the world becomes so uncontrollably beautiful that words and thoughts can't keep up with you - I call those sparkling, shining moments, in which the I feel most alive: The Glowing Hours.*
*Borrowed from Chapter 4 of Exuberance (Vintage Books, 2005 edition).
