Quiet sadness

I’ve been thinking lately about the quiet background sadness that lives inside all of us.

Not big grief.
Not tragedy.
Not full-on sorrow.

Just that low, consistent hum that exists even on the best of days. For a long time, I tried to figure out how to make it go away because I thought there was something wrong with me.

But no—it’s just the quiet sadness of being human.

The Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön calls it the “soft spot.” Proof that the heart hasn't armored itself against reality, but remains open and tender enough to feel the world.

The poet and writer Mary Oliver saw it as the “gentle tax of loving what is mortal.” The awareness that all we love is precious precisely because it doesn't stay.

The Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama, whom I was lucky enough to see last year give a poetry reading, reminds us in his poem “How to Be Alone” that the quiet ache in our chest isn't an error, it’s just our body acknowledging how fragile it is to be alive, urging us to simply place a hand on our body, listen to the “community of madness that you are,” and that we belong here, just as we are.

In the book Year of the Monkey, the epic Patti Smith writes : "I'm going to stay right here, I thought. Sitting in this quiet room, watching the snow fall, feeling a certain sadness, but a good sadness, the kind that comes when you realize you're completely alive.”

This is one reason I love to read. To be reminded time and time again that I am not alone in my alive-ness.
That, to some degree, we all feel the same stuff.
That I am not broken, even when I’m sad for no apparent reason.
That we live in a world that’s heartbreaking and beautiful in equal measure.
And that instead of trying to make sadness go away, the kindest thing we can do is simply greet it with an open heart.

There’s a strange relief in that. Kind of like when you’re holding your breath without realizing it and then you exhale, or carrying something really heavy and then putting it down. There’s a lightness in the absence of resistance.

The next time you feel that small, quiet ache humming away in the background, don't panic. You don't need to fix it, and you don't need to figure it out. Just place a hand on your chest, take a deep breath, and let yourself be there with it. This is you alive in this moment, along with the rest of us.

You are whole.

You are complete.

Molly