Posted on

Bittersweet : the soul unifying quality

This is a beautiful description by writer Susan Cain on the qualities of depth of feeling that mark some of us out for lives in which we try to turn our depths of pain and sadness in our lives into beauty or soul food. Sadly often modern society pathologises us for feeling in this way, a tradition that began when Freud compared melancholy to depression and yes, the two are related but in her wonderful new book Bittersweet : How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, she turns this interpretation around and shows how limited it is. The gifts of embracing our sadness and longing actually end up making us more compassionate and more capable of acknowledging our shared humanity.

bittersweetness shows us how to respond to pain: by acknowledging it and attempting to turn it into art, the way musicians do, or healing, or innovation, or anything else that nourishes the soul. If we don’t transform our sorrows and longings, we can end up inflicting them upon others via abuse, dominion, neglect.. But if we realise that all humans know, or will know – loss and suffering, we can turn toward each other.

Susan Cain : Bittersweet ; How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

Unknown's avatar

Published by: emergingfromthedarknight

"The religious naturalist is provisioned with tales of natural emergence that are, to my mind, far more magical than traditional miracles. Emergence is inherent in everything that is alive, allowing our yearning for supernatural miracles to be subsumed by our joy in the countless miracles that surround us." Ursula Goodenough How to describe oneself? People are a mystery and there is so much more to us than just our particular experiences or occupations. I could write down a list of attributes and they still might not paint a complete picture pf Deborah Louise and in any case it would not be the full truth of me. I would say that my purpose here on Wordpress is to express some of my random experiences, thoughts and feelings, to share about my particular journey and explore some subjects dear to my heart, such as emotional recovery, healing and astrology while posting up some of the prose/poems which are an outgrowth of my labours with life, love and relationships. If anything I write touches you I would be so pleased to hear for the purpose of reaching out and expressung ourselves is hopefully to connect with each other and find where our souls meet.

Categories Uncategorized8 Comments

8 thoughts on “Bittersweet : the soul unifying quality”

Leave a comment