We all have an emotional baseline in which we return to following times of pleasure or pain. It’s why accident victims and lottery winners tend to be more or less equally content with life after some time has passed.

But I don’t think that baseline is the same for all people. Due to lifestyles with more frequent extremes of emotion, I believe that their baseline is more jagged than flat.

I’ve thought about this lately because I haven’t felt on a consistent baseline in quite some time. I have a pretty good idea of what the general feeling could be, but I feel that I bounce around it rather than staying on course.

The last decade of my life has had a lot of big highs and lows. The spread has been significant; the frequency often. And a few weeks ago my wife and I were chatting about this with some friends who have similar lifestyles, and both of whom feel the same about their lack of a constant baseline.

This is neither complaint nor gratitude. And I don’t believe that this is necessarily uncommon. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about lately and would like to dig a little deeper on the subject.