Over/Under

Dear Beloved,

What can I do?  I cannot fathom when my over-joy and my over-enthusiasm slide into over-bearing!

I want to be demure, of course, like the dickens I do!  As we all do, like the Edwardian novels, but I get carried away by delight with the planet.  I am tumbling down the hill of possibilities face first and everyone around me is horrified.  It seems a shame that our most ingrained attributes are merely annoying and irritating to the Rest of the World.  I know that often that group includes you.

On the opposite side of the coin, there is me, and my sometimes frustration with what seems like apathy.  I get angry that you don't want to run down the street to the Byzantine basilica, or yet another ice cream stand.  How can you shun these delights?

 I read a fine expression of this feeling in Tove Jansson's book Sculptor's Daughter.  She tells of a frustrated woman who is making a mosaic of pebbles on some steps.  Ms. Jansson asks the woman why she doesn't seem to like playing, and writes that she "got fed up with her because she wasn't happy.  I don't like it when people find life difficult.  It gives me a bad conscience and then I get angry and begin to feel that they might as well go somewhere else."