When Happiness & Sadness Collide (Alt. Title Bitter-sweet) – A Doodle

I want to articulate a person torn between happiness and sadness, in a cycle of one side feeding onto another. I thought of fish out of water. One time, I read about this on the Internet, or it could have been from a scientific magazine. Fish feel the pain too. When they are pulled out of the sea. Even for that brief moment. That gasp for water but it is air instead. It is like submerging a human’s head into the water, that gasp for air but it is water instead.

So fish denotes the pain while the cats feed onto the fish and stay merry. A face with two sides. On the left, the sadness; on the right, the opposite (note: try covering each side and observe, it is rather fun). The stormy weather and the flood on the left versus the sunshine and life on the right. That contrast I want to bring, the polar opposite that co-exists. The ironic symbiosis between the two different emotions. The struggle and the torn so intense.

When I shared this drawing with N who is an artist in her own right, whose birthday is tomorrow, before I even explained the concept, her immediate response was, “Bitter-sweet”.

I think she got it.