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Today's
Meditation:
I don't
think that it's sadistic at all, Joseph. As
Longfellow said many, many years ago: "some
days must be dreary." We're not always up, not
always cheerful, and if we expect ourselves to be then
we're setting ourselves up for some major disappointments
in life when those down times come. There are many
in this world who believe that it's important to learn
from all of our states, sadness included. And we can
learn from it only if we allow ourselves to feel it, to
experience it, to live it-- even revel in it, perhaps.
Sadness
is part of who we are. It comes only sometimes, of
course, and it probably wouldn't make a good constant
friend, but it is one of the realities of life. When
it does come, we shouldn't try to deny it or banish
it. Rather, we should accept it, make room for it in
our lives, and let it teach us.
If we
develop a relationship with sadness, one that allows us to
share our lives with it, then we can be in touch with
sadness whenever we need to be. We can tap into it
when we feel sad about the state our planet is in, when we
realize how many people are being hurt in so many ways on
our planet, when we feel the overwhelming burden of all
the wars and poverty and crime that hurt so many
people. And we can feel that sadness without letting
it take control of us and our lives. We can feel
it-- completely appropriately-- and let it be part of us
without it debilitating us.
Unbridled
joy is a part of our lives only sometimes, though it's
always there inside of us, waiting to be set free.
Sadness, too, is there, just waiting for us to access it
and allow it to help us to get through difficult times and
to work our way through difficult situations. It's
up to us to develop a relationship with it that's mutually
beneficial, and allow sadness to be a part of our lives,
as so many other things are.
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For further
thought:
"Life
is not all sadness," Old Hawk continued. "Yet, without
sadness we
would not yearn for joy, and strive to find it, and treasure it when
it comes. It is also a fact that neither sadness nor joy is with us
constantly. And how
often one of the other is part of our journey is not always within our
control. We all want joy more than sadness and rare is the person who wants
sadness at all."
Joseph M. Marshall III
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