It’s time I started writing again after quite a long break. I’ll probably be rusty. Bear with me (or just let this and the next couple pass by). Cheers!

It was an excellent moment. Delightful even. And it made me happy.

I’d spent a few months filling in some parts of a senior role within the organisation I work for. One of those tasks was to join the senior execs for their weekly meeting. It was the kind of meeting that deals with HR and risk and budgets and complaints and legal issues and strategy questions and staffing concerns and and and and. All the kinds of things that I’m neither good at, nor all that interested in.

And this moment marked the end of that period of filling in. The moment my last meeting as part of the group wrapped up.

I was so happy to have finished, to get those few hours each week back into my diary. I’d been counting down the weeks, and the blessed moment had finally arrived. I could (and maybe did) have done a little dance.

And yet…I also walked away a little sad.

I’d come to really value the people I was meeting with. To understand that in exercising their own gifts and skills they want the best for the organisation at least as much as I do.

I’d come to realise that I was learning a huge amount from each of them individually, and from participating in the meetings with them collectively.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to re-invent myself as an accountant or HR manager or risk specialist on the basis of this series of meetings…but nonetheless I’d learned a huge amount and valued the opportunity. As much as I was happy…I felt sad too.

It was a thoroughly confusing moment, to realise that as much as I was happy (and I most definitely was), there was also a little gloominess in the mix (and it was real).

It is, I guess, a strange, but very human thing that we can have these seemingly contradictory feelings in the same moment.

Maybe it’s similar to those contradictory feelings of grief and relief when an elderly relative passes after long and painful health battle.

Or the mix of disappointment and joy when a much-anticipated event is cancelled, but frees up enough time for some long overdue family time (or an afternoon nap 😉 ).

Maybe living with contradiction, with seemingly contrary emotions is entirely human. Is holding in tension two things that seem impossible to have happily co-exist a vital daily reality?

For me at least, realising my capacity to be both happy and sad in the same moment was a helpful reminder. A reminder that the world I inhabit is rarely either/or. Rarely black or white. It’s more often both/and. More often shades of grey.

In so many ways we’re inhabiting a complex world, building for ourselves a a complex and confusing culture. I wonder if, for me at least, learning this capacity to hold opposites in tension, to notice the contrasts in myself, and in the world around me, might just help me make sense of it.

Being happy and sad at the same moment might just be a pointer to a bigger reality.

Still, the next time the appointed hour for that meeting rolls around and I notice a big yawning space in my diary so I can pursue other work? I think happiness might just win out. 🙂