The trick comes in planning next summer’s vacation while knowing that next summer is not promised to anyone. This impermanence is the key to our pain and our joy.
– Sallie Tisdale
This quotation was one of the first I came across in my exploration of death, from Tisdale’s book, Advice to Future Corpses. It struck a chord that is still reverberating in me. Pain and joy, happiness and sadness, are inextricably linked, because one cannot exist without the shadow of the other existing, too.
You cannot be sad without understanding that, sometime, happiness will be there, too. It really helped to settle my uncertainty, and tinge my depression with hope.
And you cannot be happy without knowing, somewhere, that sadness is possible: there’s no escaping the fact that sadness is always part of the equation when you experience happiness. This has really tempered my understanding of happiness, and rather than color it with sadness, it has made it more dear to me.
It’s really a lovely thought. I recommend the book.
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