What Makes Me Sad?
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
While reading the novel: Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, I came across the following short passage that I so identified with. It was for the first time I felt seen.
“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy.
And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach.
By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone.
By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness.
I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad.
Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room.
He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all.
And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping.
And by the mid-afternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.”
~Jonathan Safran Foer
Not being really seen, makes me sad.
Having many friends and people consistently in one's life is advocated for, but for me it sometimes makes me wish I could just crawl back into my isolation, and per say that is what I actually do.
It hurts being surrounded by people who I can really understand but somehow to them I am a spectre.
Some try to act like they see me but just share a dream with them and the feedback from them just makes it so clear how in the dark they are about who I really am.
It led me on a journey seeking that one person who would really see me for me, but somehow that didn't happen, but instead I just got more sad, but also I got insights on how futile it is to try and actively search for it.
Through mindful habits I have learned how to live with it. I have a few people in my life who even if they don't really see me they just let me be.
My goal to travel the world and meet with different people is heavily influenced by that search for that person who finally actually sees me. It is not the main goal for my travels but it definitely contributed to the ignition of that flame in me.
"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine."
~Friedrich Nietzsche
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