Alphonse Marie Mucha: The Seasons (1897)

" … an infinite game perhaps intended to encourage the pursuit of happiness …"

"There Ain't No Cure For The Summertime Blues." - common folk wisdom

In the deepest and darkest days of a typical January, some notable percentage of the population will at any time suffer the effects of what's labeled Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). The effects tend to be mild to moderate depression, said to be caused by light deprivation. Common treatments include exposure to broad-spectrum lighting and long naps. Many escape South to become what we call Snow Birds. Some even become extremists and purchase second houses in places where the sun always shines, like Arizona and extreme Southern New Mexico, abandoning their more Northern homesteads half the time. Zealots might move to some awful place like Florida full-time to escape these effects.

There ain't no actual cure for January's Seasonal Affective Disorder, though there are treatments. Treatments might never cure the disorder but might still lessen its primary effects. The treatments might not induce actual happiness; they encourage its pursuit while perhaps reducing the depth of sadness experienced. The old rule of thumb insists that if you're sad at home, you'll probably feel sad on vacation, though feeling sad in a brand new location with different sun angles can feel refreshing.

I've experienced Seasonal Affective Disorder in every season. The January kind might be the most popularly recognizable, but each season seems to harbor its unique blue color. Spring might bring heartbreaks or April shower-induced head colds. Autumn famously fuels frights from Halloween to seeing the Summer garden fall to frost. Summer might bring the most surprising Seasonal Affective Disorder because Summer rarely brings anything remotely resembling light deprivation, but its opposite. I contend that, like fire and ice, either extreme suffices to put stress on the old coping mechanisms. Those of us who watch ourselves fleeing from the sun like introverts attending a used car salesperson convention understand the forces that might render even a dedicated optimist summertime SAD. The unrelenting nature of one-hundred-plus-degree temperatures and the seasonal inability to sleep with windows wide open at night disconnects some of us from ourselves. We want a tall, cool drink of water but receive only handfuls of scorching or tepid sand.

I draw the shades and crank the ceiling fan up to Hurricane. I need the noises surrounding me to exceed the languid hissing of summer lawns and the roaring of their mowers. I need to flee the unrelenting obligations, the watering schedules, and the deadheading duties. Miss one day, and the deck garden dries up and might just as well blow away. The days go on beyond forever, and ThereAin'tNoCure, other than to lose a few hours to naps and skip a few suppers. I find I cannot eat three square meals in July and often choose to go back to bed after breakfast. Cold showers help, though their curative effects soon wear off. I'm not so much SAD, perhaps just overwhelmed. Maybe I just need a vacation, except even a vacation seems like just another obligation. Leaving during watering season seems more stressful than simply staying home.

Whatever the season, each seems designed to stress our coping mechanisms. It seems that we learn early, while still sitting on January's knee or July's, that variety provides more than merely some spice to life. Unrelenting anything might most reliably induce discouragement or depression. SADness might set the stage for more deeply enjoying its counterpoints. I distantly imagine how fine I'll feel once I find the other side of the current hot spell. I can usually revel for a few hours in the early mornings and almost sense some remnants of Spring still lingering in the shadows. I can slip into the Beer Closet at the Albertsons if I need a little November in my summertime diet, and those cold showers satisfy as well as any April's out of season. Each extreme encourages some counterbalancing response, and while a SADness incites the reaction, the responses, while not curing, can certainly provide some distracting sense of cornering the intruder.

I might suffer most from Seasonal Affective Inspirational Disorder (SAID), where my seasonal SADness seems to inspire some more reassuring responses. None of the more popular Affective Disorders typically prove terminal. They're each seasonal and fleeting. Conquering one can't prevent the following. Sadness seems an infinite game, perhaps intended to encourage the pursuit of happiness in any season.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz