An ode to sadness and the people that use it as their compass

I feel a lot, always have. The time of my birth was potent with loss. My soul and tiny body were imprinted with all of that. Sadness. I was a crier as a child – She should have been on broadway, this one! was the war cry of my childhood. A friend of mine once told me all they kept thinking walking down the aisle was – Don’t look at Helene, don’t look at Helene! I would be crying, and that would tip her over the edge. Only recently did I think about how much power there is in that. 

I want to be clear I am not placing one form of feeling, caring, or perceiving the world above another. NO! not at all. We all see the world differently. I am advocating making more room for sadness. There is so much wisdom there.

I am not a happy person. The scales of my emotional spectrum tilt towards melancholy; it has taken me a long time to say that without feeling shame. In a culture that worships happiness, acknowledging that I am a sad person has felt very awkward. Sure, I laugh a lot, at absurdity mostly. I experience a whole host of emotions, lots of joy, but the undercurrent of my life, the theme tune if you like, is sadness. 

The more I tried to live up to societal expectations of happiness – Smile! Cheer up… Don’t cry! The more ajar I felt. The more I focused on external things, hoping they would make me happy, the more I sparred with the world.

You need to be happy to live, I don’t – Keanu Reeves. These words resonated with me so much! I realised that the purpose of therapy, of self-development, was not a quest to become happy. It is to know ourselves deeply. To be content with who we are. So, now I journey with: How can I lean deeper into sadness and move through the world with intent.

Lately, my eyes do not leak saltwater at every inopportune moment, though, on closer inspection, my tear ducts may often be full. Living at this tempo of sadness has opened up a world of beauty. Those idiosyncratic moments, the colours that slowly change. I love how Glennon Doyle says the world is brutifull, perfectly describing how beauty and brutality seem to hinge on the same point. 

I let my sadness guide me. What do I feel sad about? How can I take this ache in my heart, use it to paint the world, and create something beautiful? I learned that I need to pick something that chimed with me and work on that. My area of sadness expertise has been working with refugees. And, then I choose to champion others as they take on climate change or prison conditions. I cannot hold it all, but I have found a fellowship here. I marvel at all the resilient hearts, bodies, and grit. Willing to be at the coal face of humanity, clock on day after day and say – I am here, I can hold you, what do you need?

So, to sum up, moving through the world with a broken heart is not so bad. After all, I heard there is more room in one.