happiness transforming sadness

This is something I started thinking about since finishing "A Rule Against Murder."

As I said, one of the big themes of the novel seems to be the idea of taking the sadness or dysfunction of the past and either moving past it, or seeing how what you saw as dysfunction was maybe flawed people doing their best. And also, the idea that we're all broken somehow, and that with good fortune and maybe some work, we can try to transform that brokenness.

And the question rises: is it better to get rid of the sadness, or pretend it never happened, or try to move past it, or is it better to try to transform it into something somehow useful?

I've seen people who seemed to have moved past or forgotten the sadnesses of their past. Maybe they're stronger people than I am. Maybe they're in denial, I don't know.

I also found myself listening to the Hem song "Half an Acre" the other day. It contains the lyric:

"Do you carry every sadness with you
Every hour your heart was broken
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with you"

And I do tend to think, at least for some of us, we do still carry the past sadnesses with us. And I'm not sure, but the idea of telling people to "move past it" or "forget it" is not always all that helpful. I think I tend to prefer the "transformation" type thing, or the "use it as an energy" sort of thing. (Anger is also an energy. I have a friend who says, "Anger is an energy," meaning that you can use it to get things done - for example, if you are angry over an injustice, you can use that anger to propel you to try to get that taken care of.)

I also tend to think that plastering on a happy face and pretending you never had unhappiness in your life is not healthy.

But the idea of transforming that sadness somehow, or using it to teach yourself something - compassion, or the capacity for solitude, or an understanding of life. Using it as a way to grow. Because everyone has sadness, everyone has difficult times. And I don't know, I'm not the kind of person who can just lay past sadnesses down and walk away from them - but I can change them into something useful.

I don't know. I was thinking about this today. Another awful news story out there, another person who takes their anger and sense of being wronged by the world* and decided to turn it into violence and ruin a few other people's lives.

And I admit, it frustrates me, because I've known a bunch of people who went through some seriously awful times in their lives.....and yet they found a way to transform that awfulness into something beneficial and useful, or used it as a way to teach themselves something about life or the world.

(*And yeah, we don't know the full story; it's likely there were other issues there)

And I admit, my usual reaction in the face of something like this is something like, "Start knitting a hat or a pair of gloves to send to a group that distributes them to those in need." I don't know why. I suppose it's because I want to try to erase some of the pain by maybe doing a kind act, I don't know.  That sounds kind of stupid but there you are - my response to someone lashing out and doing something terrible that ruins other lives is to do something, however tiny, that might help someone else.

I also think of the line from one of the KnitLit books, from an essay by Molly Wolf, about how somehow our mistakes and our brokenness could maybe be transformed:

"I wonder sometimes if, after death, God frogs us - holds us firm, undoes the

years of pain and wrong and suffering, reknits us together in eternity's womb,

so that we emerge in glory, just as we should have been if this life weren't

so broken and bloody imperfect."

 

I like that. I like the idea. Originally, I liked it better than her next idea, that is that somehow God transforms the brokenness we have developed (or caused in ourselves) into something more whole (more holy?). But you know, now that I'm a bit older, I think I like that second idea better - that our mistakes and our sadness and our brokenness can somehow be transformed into something better and fuller than what we would have been without those things to begin with. (That the one who isn't broken in some way hasn't experienced much)

I don't know. For me, the idea of growing past, or somehow transforming, the sadness of our life is more appealing to me now than just simply getting rid of it would be. Maybe it makes us understand others better? Maybe we're more open to helping others? 

I don't know where I'm going with this, so I'll close with a little cartoon, shared from Chibird:

I like that. I like the idea of a being that can radiate happiness like a warm glow, even as it has absorbed others' sadness.