Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
A rough week for migraines, so shout out to new medications and the ability to pay for them.
A Saturday spent in the company of confetti and excellent people, a Sunday spent recovering from the extroversion thereof. Balance, a work in progress.
A phrase from the weekend: “I had to learn to believe that I could trust fall into my community.”
Conversations about grief, about grieving, about grieving while smiling, about joy in the midst of suffering.
Preoccupied with time; with deadlines and meeting them; with how much I have or don’t; with what fills my hours and days and weeks and what doesn’t. Preoccupied with the accounting of my days, the debits and the credits, the surpluses and the deficits.
You are what you repeatedly do; you become who you surround your self with. Do good, be brave.
Attribution:
Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
— On Joy and Sorrow by Kahlil Gibran