Now, obviously, this quote means that there will be sad times in everyone's life. (I know you knew that. I wasn't trying to underestimate your intelligence. That explanation was just a lead-in to this paragraph.) So, yes, there is sadness in everyone's life. There are rainy days. But there are, of course, sunny days as well.
But what I didn't realize until now is that there are days when you can be happy and sad simultaneously. What I mean is, it's okay to have a little bit of sadness that is always present in your life.
Let me explain. It's not as though I'm saying I go through life with some persistent depressive funk following me around, like those personal rain clouds they used to have in some old antidepressant commercial. I'm actually more-or-less happy most of the time. What I'm saying is, there can be problems in life that make you sad, but you don't have to fix them so you'll be happy. You have to become comfortable with the presence of some things in your life that make you sad.
Perhaps I should give a specific example. My great sadness in life is that I know it would be bad for me to have another kid. I always pictured myself having two kids, and so to say that a second child might never be created is to say that the second child I always imagined having has, effectively, died. I know it makes no sense. But apparently that's what happens. And I thought I'd have a daughter. She's dead, too. And yeah, I would NEVER trade Nathan for any daughter in the whole world, but still, she's dead.
Sad yet?
Anyway, I think as humans we have this tendency to want to banish anything that makes us feel the least bit sad. I think this is especially true for people with depression issues, because every little sad situation that happens, it's all ohmygosh am I depressed again? Must. Get. Rid. Of. All. Sadness. There is sad and there is happy, and the only way you can be happy is to erase all the sad.
Except, the options for erasing my sad situation RE: not having another kid are (1) to have another kid, or (2) to just get over it. As previously mentioned, Item (1) is a bad idea. Babies and my general body chemistry do not mesh well. But Item (2) is also not possible. You can't just get over it. We're talking about creating people here. It's the most basic, primal, biological drive we have, even though of course the whole "perpetuation of the species" campaign is totally unnecessary these days. (I mean, yeah, somebody has to do it. But other people have kind of taken over that task for me. For crying out loud, the Duggars alone give at least 20 of us a free pass to stop procreating.)
So, if there are no logical ways to erase the sadness, I must learn to live with it.
Learn to live with it. With sadness.
And I think it's only natural to wonder, when will it all be okay?
But of course, it's okay now. It's okay if I have this sad little issue in my life. It's okay if it makes me uncomfortable when I think about it, every single day of my life. It does not mean I have to find a way to banish it. It's an issue, for sure. It's my issue. And it's something I will live with.
So, I think, happiness does not mean the total absence of sadness. Happiness means the acceptance of sadness.
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