Anacoenosis (an’-a-ko-en-os’-is): Asking the opinion or judgment of the judges or audience, usually implying their common interest with the speaker in the matter [and illustrating their communally-held ideals of truth, justice, goodness and beauty, for better and for worse].
I have been worried. I have been full of confidence. There are countless other opposing feelings that we move between. We share the volatility of life’s pressures. Haven’t you awakened happy in morning’s sunshine rays only to find yourself angry and sad at the end of the day sitting on a bar stool ordering another shot and a beer? You know what it’s like to be skulking around the house angry at your partner for maxing the credit card and feeling the anger melt when you see your child’s toy bunny lying on its side on floor—the bunny your partner bought 8 years ago for your daughter’s first Easter—the bunny she still loves.
The examples I’ve cited may not exactly fit your lives, but the point they make probably does. Aren’t our lives filled with a strange instability? Isn’t our trajectory through life a wavy line—zig zags, peaks and valleys, highs and lows?
Instead of looking for a joyous straight line through life, accept the peaks and valleys because they are inevitable—they give meaning to life. Ironically, if you insist on living on the high side in some sort of manic trance, your insistence has already been thwarted by the opposition of life’s flow.
And you may embrace the negativity at the bottom of the hill holding tight with opiates, or resentment, or the mysteries of mental illness. You may act as if negativity were your lover, unable to let go by any means: rejecting appropriate medication, psychological counseling, listening to the people who love you, or by staying busy.
Desiring to stay on the mountain top or ‘stuck’ in the valley, you are doing battle with life’s sustaining flow: CHANGE. There is no sustainable ‘middle.’ There is the omnipresence of movement—mental, physical—it does not matter. Change beckons. Change demands. Change changes for better and for worse.
How many of you have heard the saying: “Life has its ups and downs”? Like most cliches, it’s true. There is no Never Never Land. Hoping and coping we move toward the inevitable.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu). Bracketed text added by Gorgias.
Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99.
The Daily Trope 