On television these two words are synonomous. Drama is excitement and shows are filled with it week in and week out. The more the better and with ever increasing intensity as a show unfolds throughout a season or seasons. However life makes quite a few distinctions between the two.
Drama is what happens when a situation causes a person or people stress, change, or causes a public scene through negative actions or statements. Things are considered particularly dramatic when the situation occurs and there was no situational reason for it other than personal needs of one individual. And there’s one in every group. It seems to be the laws of physics, in order for there to be a grouping of individuals, no matter the purpose, one of those individuals must take on the roll of dramatist. This role can pass between individuals depending on the particulars of the activity, time of day, day of the week, or it can become a designated role played by one individual who is particularly skilled at fomenting drama.
All of the above just means someone is gonna have problem sometime and they are going to share that problem with someone else and it’s going to need to get fixed. And a lot of energy is going to go into that and the louder people talk about it, the number of people they involve in it and the amount of actions, egregious or otherwise, taken to resolve it, makes it a drama. Most dramas can be avoided by using one or more of the following skills: minding one’s own business, talking honestly and openly with the seeming starting point for the incident, not doing to others what you don’t want done to you, and not feeding the emotions around the incident by giving it more attention that it is due.
However, these skills take years if not lifetimes to obtain and perfect so life will sometimes be dramatic. An easier and quicker resolution is to ‘not play at all’ and instead get involved in something exciting. Excitement is positive emotions around something. It’s even better when that something is positive and creates good things for everyone involved. Not to say that exciting things can’t end up creating drama or that the process of creating exciting things or being excited can’t be dramatic. But being excited about something and acting on that excitement is a real antidote to drama. Drama most often creates negative feelings, dissolves connection, and creates more drama. Excitement can often create community, group effort, and positive emotions. Just look at start-up companies. There’s nothing quite as dramatic as figuring out whether your doors will be open the next day or so, but it’s exciting to be working towards something you believe in, something that will help you and those around you, a community that is building around a common goal and possibly achieving it. And it’s a never-ending roller coaster ride of opportunities, new challenges, changes in course, failures and victories.
And when you are excited, there’s very little time to worry about drama. So get excited about something today. Let the drama fade and open your heart to something great. Let positivity become a habit and there’s no telling where you could end up.