HealthCommentary

Exploring Human Potential

7 & 7: Rejoice vs. Sorrow

REFLECTION:

Sorrow is a special form of vulnerability, temporarily rendering a person childlike without defense. It is isolating, but less so as we learn how common is this experience shared. Nature teaches loss and recovery, suffering survived. How good to be alive. Lose a little, learn a lot – that’s the way upward. Joy will come for those willing to wait. For we were not born to get through free of pain. The things for which there is no control, what choice is left but acceptance? Luckily for us, the human spirit is remarkably sturdy and resilient, allowing most hardship to be bearable as long as we can tell the little from the big and find a way to smile through.

MUSES:

Sorrow makes us all children again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

In extreme youth, in our most humiliating sorrow, we think we are alone. When we are older we find that others have suffered too.
Suzanne Moarny

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

To lose
Is to learn.
Anon.

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Psalms

Every man shall bear his own burden.
Galatians 6:5

Be willing to have it so; acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
William James

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
O. Henry

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