Sadness is the feeling that demonstrates how much we value what has been lost. Loss is a part of life. The first major loss I can remember is a dog, Smokie. I grew up in a rural area. Our house set about half a mile back in the woods off the paved road. We didn’t have any close neighbors. Smokie was more than my dog. He was my friend. We did everything together. Smokie always seemed old but when I was about eight, he got sick. I came home from school and Smokie wasn’t waiting for me. Mom said he had died.
Some of you are thinking, he was just a dog, but for a lonely eight-year-old boy, he was my best friend. I experienced true sadness. I would experience sadness again, as I lost family members, as I moved away from the home I had grown up in, as I went through divorce. I’ve experienced sadness at times that I didn’t understand, like when my daughters got married. I was excited. I liked my sons-in-law to be. But there was sadness because my relationship with my daughter was changing. I wouldn’t be the man she comes to first with a problem or with something to celebrate. I was excited to see her grow and sad to see our relationship change. Sadness.
The gift of sadness is acceptance, or what 12 Step Groups call Living Life on Life’s Terms. What does that mean? Life happens. When life shows up, accept it as it comes and don’t run from the reality, situation, or problem. Life is one of the many things that we have little or no control over. As we travel through life there will be times when we are overwhelmed with joy and there will be times when we are unexpectedly knocked on our ass. Most of our experience will be somewhere in between these two extremes. Dealing with life on life’s terms is often not easy. When we are handed joy, we accept it. We experience it. But we don’t expect it to always be like that. When we get knocked down, we get back up. We process and grieve the sadness, and we move forward. We accept life in the given moment.
When we react to sadness in an unhealthy way, we may choose to ignore it or attempt to numb ourselves to it. We normally think of numbing as drugs or alcohol, but we use a multitude of numbing responses. It can be things like porn or sexual behaviors, overeating, spending money, or video games. We can take any activity to an extreme to relieve sadness or pain. In unhealthy sadness we move to self-pity. If you’re focused on feeling bad about your own problems and complaints, you’re probably experiencing self-pity. If you’re so focused on what you have lost that you can’t see and appreciate what you have, self-pity. As we continue in self-pity we may begin to demand that others around us co-sign our assessment that everything in life is against us and this demand will eventually press us to isolate from anyone that appears to disagree with our view on life.
I’ll close with some questions Chip Dodd asks about sadness:
What are you sad about?
What wound has been unable to heal because of the sadness you aren’t feeling?
What sadness is in your life that you fight against?
What have you been dreaming of doing that you haven’t risked because you might lose?
If you struggle with sadness, let’s talk. Sadness is real, but so is appreciation and thankfulness. Shoot me a message at rwcoaching2@gmail.com.