This book is not about sadness - at least, not in the modern sense of the word. The word sadness originally meant "fullness" from the same latin word, satis, that also gave us sated and satisfaction. Not so long ago, to be sad meant you were filled to the brim with some intensity of experience. It wasn't just a malfunction in the joy machine. It was a state of awareness - setting the focus to infinity and taking it all in, joy and grief all at once.
When we speak of sadness these days, most of the time what we really mean is despair, which is literally defined as the absence of hope. But true sadness is actually the opposite, an exuberant upwelling that reminds you how fleeting and mysterious and open-ended life can be. That's why you'll find traces of blues all over this book, but you might find yourself feeling strangely joyful at the end of it. And if you are lucky enough to feel sad, well, savor it while it lasts - if only because it means that you care about something in this world enough to let it under your skin.
Wow!! I would in the top 0.0001% of the people in the world who hates constant happiness in life.
Pleasure, happiness, joy are such a small subset of zillion feelings all living beings can experience in their life time. Limiting oneself to just "happiness" robs one of these other innumerable rich and wonderful experiences which are necessary for a fully lived life.
Who knew one day I would devour a dictionary in no time plus relish each page of it?
That's the feeling I got while reading The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig.
Here's my favorite word:
Ambedo - a momentary trance of emotional clarity.
You look around at all the people who happen to share this corner of the world, and imagine where they came from, marveling that all of their paths managed to cross at this particular point in time. You think back to the series of events that bought you here, your choices and your mistakes and your achievements, such as they are. All the twists and turns over the years. It wasn't what you thought it would be and yet you can still look back on all the things you've lost, and the opportunities that cat came and went, and feel a pang of gratitude that it happened at all. And now here you are, feeling a kind of joyful grief for your life, in all its blessings and mysteries and chances and changes.
You look around with a new sense of gratitude, taking in the complexity of things" raindrops skittering down window, tall tress leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee. Everything falls quiet, and the words start to lose their meaning. It all seems to mix together, until you can't tell the difference between the ordinary and the epic. And you remember that you too are guest on this Earth. Your life is not just a quest, or an opportunity, or a story to tell; it's also just an experience, to be lived for its own sake. It doesn't have to mean anything other than what it is. A single moment can still stand on its own, as a morsel of existence.
But after a minute or two, you'll feel your hand reaching for your phone or the car radio, eager to drown out your thoughts with distraction. Perhaps there's a part of you that's instinctively wary of lingering too long in any one moment.
We breathe this world in, and hold on to it as long as we can, but we can't just stop there. We have to keep moving, digging around for some deeper meaning, hoping to find an escape hatch between one experience and the next. So we never feel stuck inside one little little moment, one little life.
And maybe when you read this book, you will find some of your rich feelings and experiences has a new word for it. And when you coin a word to an emotion, maybe it will make you more grateful and humble. Just, maybe.
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