On sadness

On sadness

"Our sadness is an energy we discharge in order to heal. …Sadness is painful. We try to avoid it. Actually discharging sadness releases the energy involved in our emotional pain. To hold it in is to freeze the pain within us. The therapeutic slogan is that grieving is the ‘healing feeling.’"

-- John Bradshaw

"To weep is to make less the depth of grief."

-- William Shakespeare

"There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and recovered hope."

-- George Eliot

"Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of unhappiness."

-- Lao-tzu

"When the heart grieves over what it has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left."

-- Sufi epigram

Sadness helps us achieve balance. It is in sadness that we can learn to appreciate the things that bring us back to joy.