Balloon on the Water

Some of you may have heard me talk about – or read about -
the idea that each of us has an emotional baseline. When we have good or bad experiences, it affects our happiness. Sooner or later, however, depending on the strength of the positive or negative experience, we return to our baseline.
And despite our predictions otherwise (our dreams or fears), there is almost nothing that can permanently affect that baseline. Even the most rapturous blessing or soul-sucking curse cannot forever keep us from returning to our "normal.”


Having been driven uncomfortably down below my baseline recently and wondering how long it is going to take me to return to my normal lightness of being, I envisioned a slightly different model for this theory than I have used before.


In this model, a content person's baseline happiness is the surface of a body of water, and his or her emotional state is a balloon that floats on that water. Without internal or external changes, the balloon sits afloat on the water. It doesn’t sink… it doesn’t float away in the air… it just sits on the surface. Content. The air above represents a higher state of bliss or happiness and other “positive” emotions, and the water below represents depression or sadness, and other “negative” emotions. To complicate matters slightly, there is also air and sand inside the balloon, and this air and sand is your internal lightness or heaviness of being – the attitude that affects your altitude. Positive attitude is air; negative attitude is sand.


Negative experiences are forces that drive the balloon under the water - or even deeper than it already was. Since the balloon is lighter than water, however, it starts to rise again as soon as the negative force is removed or weakened, with the speed of its ascent dependent on the balloon’s internal weight. The heavier it is inside, the slower it rises. The lighter, the faster.But eventually it bobs to the surface again unless it is very heavy inside indeed.


The opposite is true for positive experiences -- the winds that push the balloon into the sky. The balloon is heavier than air, and so it starts to sink back toward the surface as soon as the winds die down, with the speed of balloon’s descent dependent on how much sand it’s carrying. If there is almost no sand inside the balloon, it is nearly as light as the air, and it will continue to soar with even the gentlest kiss from the wind.


While we often cannot control the forces that act on us, and even many of the forces that act within us, our attitude, as represented by the amount of air or sand we carry inside, has a powerful effect not only on whether we are "normally" floating or sinking, but also on how soon we return to our normal when driven higher or lower by forces beyond our control.