Do You Hide Your Sadness?

Or do you embrace the full experience of being human? The sadness and the joy.

Confession, it’s after 10 pm and I have nothing stirring in my mind as inspiration to write about, so I pulled a conversation card and this was the question.

Do I Hide My Sadness?

From me? No, I embrace it, I call it melancholy so I feel like an 18th-century writer or poet. If you’re going to be or feel something, feel the fullness of it. What a perfect time to get lost in John Keats…. see his Ode On Melancholy below, a romantic poem about the beauty and transcience of melancholy and feeling it, being with it.

If you cannot appreciate melancholy, how can you fully appreciate joy? If you don’t experience the dark, how do you know what the light is? Is this why I can experience joy so easily? Because I’m so familiar with and not scared of the dark anymore?

There is beauty in it all, you just need to stop, look, be present and feel it. Don’t attempt to numb or deaden the feelings, even just the edges, you’ll bury them deep within you and every time they try to arise to be witnessed you’ll feel shame and push them down again. There’s nothing to be afraid of, but I believe most people are scared of their feelings. Scared to see, feel, witness, and acknowledge them because of their judgements or the collectives.

Do I hide my sadness from others? In the past, but not anymore. I’ve learnt that crying is healthy and oh so very natural, nothing to be ashamed of. I feel those in my presence are far more uncomfortable than me. Even when I say I’m fine, it’s just an emotion, they feel bad for me and want to fix it.

I want to show people that it’s ok to cry and feel, there’s nothing to fix, and it simply needs to move through me. Stopping it is the worst thing to do, you’re stunting your growth, expansion and progress. It’s ok, I’m just crying.

I’ve learnt that crying can hold a message for you, especially when it’s unexpected. If you feel something that strongly makes you cry, why? What is within the trigger of your tears that’s so important to make you cry? I’ve unexpectedly started crying mid-conversation many times and when I feel into it, I find something so deep that I would most likely not consciously realise. It is a gift. It is another step or layer to knowing yourself even more deeply.

So don’t be afraid of sad, embrace the feeling, the moment and take care of yourself and your heart. Be gentle, kind, don’t judge. You are beautiful and worthy with all that you feel and the mere fact that you’re feeling deeply is proof of that.

Everything is cyclical and everything is impermanent, just like the first rays of sunshine on the earth after the night, your joy will return and in the meantime, feel, see and listen to your melancholy heart xx

Ode On Melancholy

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

II.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

III.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to Poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

John Keats

If you’d like to learn more about this beautiful poem, click this <LINK>