BEING SAD

“The best thing for being sad, replied Merlin, is to learn something.”
~ T. H. White

The idea here is not to divert the sadness, but to give it a context from life other than what is making you sad. Just as ginger can lose its bitterness when baked in bread, sadness can be leavened by other life.

When feeling the sharpness of being sad or hurt, it helps to take new things in. This pours the water of life on the fire of the heart.

So when exhausted from expressing all that hurt, listen to music you’ve never heard of, or ask someone to tell you an old story from before your birth, or take a drive down a road near a ridge you’ve always meant to look out from.

Look with your sad eyes on things new to you that will give you something to do with your sadness. Your sadness is the paint. You must find the canvass.

~ Sit quietly and breathe evenly and let your sadness rise gently.

~ Breathe cleanly and let the things around you that are not sad teach you something.

~ Just breathe, and let the chair teach you about wood, let the wall teach you about being bare, let the window teach you how to let light in.

The Book of Awakening

~ Mark Nepo