Grateful To Be Sad

"Well yeah, and I'm sad, but at the same time I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin' really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I'm feelin' is like, a beautiful sadness."

- South Park, "Raisins" 

Leave it to the writers of South Park to have some of the most profound wisdom on sadness. I'm pondering this as I mourn the moving away of some close friends and their four-year-old son, whom I grew very close to over the last three years. It is most definitely an occasion of sadness as they were a bright shining light in my life here in LA.

As I've slowly learned over the years, we must embrace our emotions in order to process them and move forward. Often it's tempting to resist or run away from unpleasant emotions, and I've always been very prone to that. Hell, I didn't have a good cry over my last relationship until a year later when I found out she was in a serious relationship with someone else. But all that does is delay the inevitable and make things worse in the long run. So, I'm doing my best to embrace the sadness and face it head-on.

Being sad is never pleasant, of course, but it is oddly reassuring and life-affirming because you realize you have—or had—something in your life worth being sad over. It's a reminder of what makes life worth living and what is really important. It's painful, draining, and scary, but also wonderful in a way that makes sense while not making sense. If anything is the epitome of yin yang, sadness is it. It is light wrapped in a darkness burrito; the sour cream is definitely sour, yet tasty.

So, to sadness, I raise a glass of refreshing cool Summer Shandy. As counterintuitive as it seems and feels, I am grateful to be sad.