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The Blessing of Sadness

Wednesday Jun 06 2007

By Don Arnoudse
Bio

For as long as I can remember, I have been an optimistic person. I’ve always taken great pride in my natural inclination to see a ‘silver lining in every cloud’. ‘Making lemonade out of lemons’ was one of my favorite clichés. Imagine my surprise when, in a recent conversation with Ann, my personal coach, I heard her say she felt a deep shiver of sadness while listening to me. It brought me up short. I had been talking about turning 59 years old, how good life was right now and, at the same time, how acutely aware I was of how fast time was flying by. When I stopped, took a deep breath, and listened to my body, I realized that deep down there was a pool of sadness within me. This is an emotion I’ve kept at bay for a long time.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Personal Empowerment
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Tagged with: emotion loss mortality relationship sadness

Riverboats and Bone Yards V

Monday Mar 05 2007

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This is the fifth in a five-part series.

Is there any joy to be found in sadness? I believe there is. Sadness is almost always about loss. If we are able to examine in a serious way the nature of that loss, I think we would find a validation of what we took to be good. In other words, sadness can be a reaffirmation of the virtues we hold dear. This can be a bit tricky though. For example, if one regrets the passage of youth for its own sake, enormous and ultimately futile effort is needed to ignore the ceaseless transformation that the natural world presents.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Learning
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Tagged with: age loss old sadness youth