The Power of Sadness: Embracing Emotion and Finding Light Amidst the Darkness
Sadness is part of the human condition. It’s so much a part of who we are that children learn what that emotion is on shows like Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues. The emotion is part of us from the moment we are born in the same way happiness is. Because life brings us both and Humans are capable of feeling a range of emotions that can both tear you apart and make you whole again in the same moment
Watching your child graduate, saying goodbye to someone for good, or for some just waking up every day.
And Every day, we as humans beg for that sadness to leave us so what we can continue to be fulfilled by the decidedly better emotion of happiness. But is sadness really a bad emotion?
Sadness is defined as being affected by unhappiness or grief and being sorrowful or mournful. Which are all very intense emotions. They all make you feel like your whole body is alive and ready to just crumble into our souls in a way that physically and passionately hurts. Like the weight of everything that is… has come to tear you apart, and it’s all happening inside out. Tears fall as a sign of what’s going on within and we carry this with us everywhere we go. Sometimes hiding the torture from the world because as adults we learn to hide it. Professionalism doesn’t take kindly to being human. And robots don’t feel.
But we ARE human, and we DO feel.
Image Credit: @julienlphoto
And Sadness is an emotion we can never escape, and with that intensity is the memory of the way we have had happiness in our lives. Dancing in the wind of life that brought us the similar explosions inside of us but instead of crumbling in the darkness… we are rays of light that shoot out of every part of our souls.
And with that alone, the sadness is good. The sadness is real and its perfection.
Because that sadness allows us as humans to break through the pain by crumbling down the pieces. It hurts to shed our old skin but it’s the old skin that holds the pain. And the pain is how we as humans know it’s time to shed that skin.
Like the phoenix that rises from the ashes…
Humans rise above the pain and sorrow and little by little we bring back the happiness into our lives. The light is inside of us always. It’s why we must never give up, and why it truly does get better again.
We must bear the sadness to grow and learn and carry the new skin we were destined to wear. Sadness is a good emotion because it means we feel and to feel is to be human.
Be human, feel and allow the light to break through again, because Happiness is just waiting for you to break down the walls. Those walls are made to be broken. Thankful for the Sadness so I can continue to grow into the Human I was meant to become.
