Relief is the best emotion. I’ve always found it so.
Like the time you were a kid dreaming you were stuck on the roof of a speeding train, screaming through the night with lightning going off all around and smoke and grit flying into your face (it was a steam train, ok?)…and then you woke up in the loving arms of your mother who’d just come in to check on you and found you rolling and twitching.
Or the time when you’d lost your keys for the 87th time on a really important morning (…any other morning than this…) and had already got stinky emptying out the kitchen bin of assorted abominations: furry orange peels, crusty tissues, rancid lettuce heads covered with slimy bean juice…and then finally you FOUND the keys!!! – in the middle of the floor!??!!…
THIS is the stuff. The motherfucking hero buzz that chemists can only hope to imitate. Don’t tell me that that rush of relief is purely a dopamine high, ‘cos it’s mixed with the sober, factual knowledge that EVERYTHING IS ALL RIGHT. You’re living, sane and back on terra firma – the good old reality that demands no bells and whistles.
The train-top ride was only a dream. You found your keys. IT’S OK….
Imagine being in the crew of Apollo 13 when they finally hit the Atlantic in that singed NASA cone. To go so far into the jaws of despair and return must have made them realise that all the wonderful, awesome, precious stuff was right back here on earth all the time.
It was almost worth fucking up in the first place.
Tom George 