Picasso

Picasso had a Blue period, and I have a Question Everything period. Not that I am Picasso, or even close to it, but I, too, have my seasons. Just like nature. And just like the great artist, I am also part of nature. I digress. Obviously. Take two on this night's Question Everything theme. This well-known and highly popularized common phrase that goes like this: "If you can't beat them, join them." I am sure you have heard it and maybe even used once or twice or thrice in daily conversation. What, in the world, is it trying to say? I may venture to say that it is one of the most pessimistic and non-inspiring and spirit-killing phrases out there. Who's responsible for it anyway! (Google reports it was the famous puppeteer Jim Henson). As famous and ingenious as the man may be, his phrase has the effect on me similar to the act of crawling under the covers with shutters closed and no sunlight coming through. In other words, depression is the word of the day. Perhaps, I am misunderstanding his meaning? Maybe? Hopefully? Does he mean that if you're unable to change something, you might as well be absorbed by it? So, if something makes me unhappy, and I don't see a way to change that one thing, I may as well give up? Throw my hands up in the air "like I just don't care," and contribute to the problem? Wow.. sounds like a truly inspiring way to live out the remainder of my life (which, by the way, hasn't even begun). I would prefer to read the quote in another way: if something makes me unhappy, rather than joining the unhappiness, I need to embrace it. If I embrace it, see it for what it is, I can have a clarity about it. I can separate myself from the strong magnetic dissonance that it exudes. I can be on the outside of it. And then, I can work with it. I am not joining it, I am not fighting it. I am simply observing, watching, and learning from it. And from there, there is a chance of affecting, and even (may I venture to say) "beating" it.