Bittersweet

The place you suffer is the place you care. The best response to pain is to dive deeper into your caring.

Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering—or find someone who makes it for you.

“sad” music, like Leonard Cohen’s, isn’t really sad at all: ... it’s rooted in brokenness, but points at transcendence.

You might think you’re in control of unwanted emotions when you ignore them, but in fact they control you. Internal pain always comes out. Always. And who pays the price? We do. Our children, our colleagues, our communities.”

living in a bittersweet state, with an intense awareness of life’s fragility and the pain of separation, is an underappreciated strength and an unexpected path to wisdom, joy, and especially communion.

When children (especially those growing up in relative comfort) grieve a loss, they’re crying in part because we’ve unwittingly taught them a delusion—that things are supposed to be whole; that real life is when things are going well; that disappointment, illness, and flies at the picnic are detours from the main road.

This distinction—between moving on and moving forward—is the heart of a TED Talk given by author Nora McInerny, and it’s the most powerful framework I’ve found for embracing the bittersweet nature of existence that unites us all.

He believes that between this world and the next is a window, not a wall, and that our “death-phobic” society stops us from seeing this.

And what should we do with the eternal elusiveness of our most precious dreams? I come back, always, to the metaphoric response of the Kabbalah—the mystical branch of Judaism that inspired Leonard Cohen’s broken “Hallelujah.” That, in the beginning, all of creation was a vessel filled with divine light. That it broke apart, and now the shards of holiness are strewn all around us. Sometimes it’s too dark to see them, sometimes we’re too distracted by pain or conflict. But our task is simple—to bend down, dig them out, pick them up. And in so doing, to perceive that light can emerge from darkness, death gives way to rebirth, the soul descends to this riven world for the sake of learning how to ascend. And to realize that we all notice different shards; I might see a lump of coal, but you spot the gold glimmering beneath. Note: It requires us to act, to bend down actively and see the beauty within the shards