Be open to your happiness and sadness as they arise. – John M. Thomas
I love this (also yet another sky photograph). As my Landslide post described, happiness and sadness arise for me out of thin air sometimes, swamping like an unanticipated wave. At other times they come up with a steadier drumbeat, reaching a more conventional crescendo.
This is, I believe, one of the major tasks of my life: to learn to ride these various swells and ebbs without fear, to honor each moment as it comes, to trust that sadness will eventually make way to happiness again as firmly as I already know that joy will fade away to melancholy.
And after all, the happiness means nothing without the sadness. That is another of the few things I know for sure. I don’t much care for The Prophet, finding it slightly hackneyed, but one of Gibran’s lines encapsulates this more perfectly than I ever could: The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.