“The word ‘happy’ would lose it’s meaning if it were not balanced by sadness” – Carl Jung.
Life is not always easy. You get tired of fighting and faking a smile when your heart wants to cry and sometimes it’s exhausting to deal with with people who constantly try to burden you with a zillion questions on that one ineluctable emotion – Sadness!
Sadness is something that needs to be embraced, experienced and explored. We have claimed not to want it but its good to willingly dig into it when it’s served.When people think of living a positive life, they imagine life without any emotions under the category of negative – fear, anger, frustration, disappointment etc. But sometimes it is good to allow ourselves to feel what we are feeling. It is believed that sadness holds happiness back and if we remove sadness totally, happiness will come skipping back. Well, that’s not how it works.
Sadness comes because at some point there is so much happiness. It is terrible to experience being sad but it is also a beautiful thing. This sadness comes as a result of being happy with someone or something, of having had an experience which was so astounding that you didn’t want it to end. There is a beauty even in the hardest times and one should value whatever needs to be felt. Rather than holding back , let sadness flow freely.
Don’t be ashamed on your gloominess. You are experiencing it for a reason. Allow yourself to put a spotlight on it, let it penetrate through you and finally, accept it for what it is. Without setting sadness free , it remains trapped inside us flapping about like a bird in a cage. This beauty might be elusive at first but don’t let it fool you – It is there and always has been. Sadness is sometimes purposeful, mandatory and often a result of mourning for what was or what could have been.
But like every beginning has an ending, one should know the way to bring oneself back to now. Direct you attention to things that make you mirthful , excited and raise your spirits. While experiencing sadness is essential to living a positive life, dwelling in it is not. One should know that when negative emotions cross paths, it is often an occurrence of one’s attachment to the past or future.
I have always been an extremist which is why this lesson is hard for me to learn. I always thought it is essential to be happy or sad, no grey areas, never realising that it is important to have a balance, never understanding an overindulgence in any emotion can turn positives into negatives. I know now, that sadness or any other emotion should be allowed or incorporated in one’s life – in adequate quantity, as avoidance is the key to unhappiness.
On that note, there is always something beautiful in reveling in sadness!
thoughts by N 