Mornings and Mournings

I awoke this morning feeling as if I were dangling over a well of sadness. Most mornings I am able to ingnore it, or the feeling passes too quickly to be noticed, or maybe I'm in a different place altogether, I don't know. But I have these mornings, too, when the sadness of others, the sadness I witness and wade through with them seeps into my own, and replenishes my internal aquifer as it were. This AM, I am aware of the sadness of the world, and my own.

I don't know that we are supposed to rid ourselves of this sadness. I've not tried to rid myself of mine. Instead I use it as a touch point between myself and others, a sea for empathy where sadness is acknowledged to be part of our common human condition. Maybe we all "dangle" over it in some way or another. Maybe events conspire, and we lose whatever it was that was holding us up and keeping us from plunging, and we find ourselves swimming or even in over our heads in sadness... I don't know.

I remember reading a book a long time ago by the Spanish existentialist Miquel de Unanumo, called The Tragic Sense of Life. I don't remember that de Unanumo talked much about sadness per se, but rather, like a lot of existentialists I suppose, about life's essentially tragic core. There is a truth to that perspective. Certainly in hospice and bereavement we encounter people who are discovering something of the tragic stream of life.

But tragedy is only one stream, and the River of Life is fed by many tributaries. My hope for people who discover the river of tragedy (suddenly) has made its course through their lives, is that they will continue to explore Life's ever changing landscape. There are mountains of gladness out there, too, still. It is just that everything has shifted for the time being.

I awoke this morning more aware of my sadness than anything, true. And really, it'd be alright to stay in this place for a while, for sadness after all is a part of life-- I am no less vital, I have not stopped living because I am sad! But the day beckons. The birds who come to the feeder cock their heads at me, as if pointing to other places to go, alternatives to staying put. I'll just have to follow them, and see where they are going...

Like the ol' spiritual said, "I'll fly away..."