Sorrow

“When sorrows come they come not single spies,
but in battalions.”

William Shakespeare

Sadness and sorrow are part of the bricks and mortar that makes up our lives. Émile Durkheim (Sociologist) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (Transcendental Philosopher) respectively said that sadness doesn’t reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world; but it’s a product of our own thought, making us children again, destroying differences of intellect. Is that so? Is there any truth in William Blake’s (Poet) thinking when he says that sorrow is utterly useless? He draws an analogy to this effect by saying that a blight (disease) never does a tree well, but if it fails to kill a tree and the tree still bears fruit, then no one should say that the fruit was in consequence of the blight. Even for Samuel Johnson, there is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but he concedes that there is something in it so like a virtue that he who is entirely without it, cannot be loved. 

Simone Weil (Philosopher) mentions that she always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune fail to suit people; either because people seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed by it.

Now, having read all of the above, let us think about what these people said. Then ask yourself: How can sorrow be utterly useless? I am convinced that sorrow is not at all a useless emotion. I already mentioned in previous discussions how misfortune may assist in defining us. Sorrow may even prepare you for bouts of joy. I, therefore, believe that sorrow, if experienced in reasonable quantities, are good for you. As in so many cases mentioned thus far, in extreme dosages, it might have debilitating results. Learn from your sorrows, don’t let it drag you down.

Don’t go to bed with draining sadness and sorrow,

it may rob you of any hope for tomorrow…

Rather entertain it in reasonable quantities, 

and turn your gaze to the flowers, the birds, the bees and the trees. 

Picture source