Sad Sack

I’ve been thinking a lot about sadness lately.

If sadness is an ocean, I’m privileged today to ponder it from a warm spot on the beach. With distance and comfort. The heavy waves lapping on the shore, the unseen riptide that can take hold and drown one towards depression, the smell of it, the vastness, the mystery lurking below the surface…. I know all too well what it is to float adrift in it with no sight of refuge but, this day, I’m like Johnathan Livingston Seagull. Nourishing myself with fruit from it, riding the thermal drift just above the surface, enjoying the reflection and play of light on its surface. Here I am, a perfectly happy human, contemplating sadness.

Can you name the last time somebody asked you in passing, “How are you?” and, even though you were steeped in sadness, you replied with, “Doing good! Thanks for asking!” It’s as though people are afraid that sadness is contagious or viral. Like an illness or enemy, it needs to be beaten. It needs to be defeated. It needs to be denied. It needs to take up as little space in our psyche as possible so that all the love and light and ‘high vibes’ can keep things shiny and clean. God forbid we honor our sadness like we do our success…

In my line of work, sadness has a seat at the table. In perpetuity. Maybe not even a seat, sadness might have its own throne. Up on the altar right beside Joy. Together, they rule. Two halves of the same coin, they cannot be separated. Major and Minor. Light and Dark. Yes and No. Sadness and Joy. There’s a divine symmetry between these concepts and an egregious chasm in our cultures ability to flow between the poles with any grace. I happen to think that acknowledging sadness would be bad for business. Big Pharma, Big Cosmetics, Big Diet, Big Wellness, Big Therapy, Big Everything is well served by a population of slaves who are programed to think that they should be happy more. They make money off the insecurity that if we bought this, lost that, covered up this or whatever that then, FINALLY!, we’ll be happy like all the other sheep we scroll on Instagram. Allowing sadness is bad for business and so it’s been co-opted, corrupted and exiled to the extreme detriment of all of us.

We are in the midst of a mass extinction. Biodiversity, languages, tradition keepers, cultures are perishing every minute. Technology is accelerating the volume and velocity of the bad news and the oppressive paradigm of ‘work. sleep. eat. repeat’ holds most of the population hostage and indebted. It’s an intense time. In only five short millennia we have exploded from 50 million people to over 6 billion and shit is getting real. The tragedies that our own blood lived and died through RECENTLY so that we can drink coffee and scroll social media may pale in comparison to what lies in store for us when the climate begins to collapse. All of this and you don’t feel desired by your spouse or your kid is an asshole or you can’t pay that bill or the barista got your order wrong… There are a lot of very legitimate reasons to feel sadness right now and I want to invite us all to take a deep breath and allow it.

Your sadness is your birthright. It’s in your bones and hair and heart. It’s a part of you and it deserves to exist. Without sadness there is no such thing as joy. Without deep darkness there is no love and light. We need it and we need to reclaim it. Each of us needs to find the courage to re-relate to parts of us that need grieving. Each of us needs to summon the strength to allow our feelings to be felt and, more importantly, shared. What we reveal, we are able to heal. I know that there’s a lot of righteous and scary programming that has convinced you that there’s something wrong with you if you’re sad. That you’re weak or broken or unwelcome or bad in some way. Press delete on that thought. Empty the bin. Compost it. It’s not fucking true and our insistence on believing it is making us sick, weak, anxious and insecure.

Allow yourself a moment to feel your own sadness.

Allow yourself a moment to feel the sadness of your loved ones.

Allow yourself a moment to feel the sadness of your community.

Allow yourself a moment to feel the sadness of your country.

Allow yourself a moment to feel the sadness of our world.

Cry for the whales. Cry for the trees. Cry for the cuckoos. Cry for the exterminated ones, the burned ones, the bombed ones, the ignorant ones, the marginalized ones, the ones who can’t cry for themselves.

Weep for what’s been lost. Who’s been lost.

Let the water fall.

Let your heart break.

Let your heart break open.