In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.
Shakespeare
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Sometimes a great sadness settles over me like a cold, cloudy day. It happened to me yesterday, and I don't understand it because yesterday was a beautiful spring like day, a day in which I should have been happy to be alive, to be active and involved in things. I was busy and I did and saw many things that were joyful. Then why this anchor in my heart?
Certain things I know from experience, and one of them is that the feeling will not last. It comes and goes like bad weather and is usually based on nothing in particular or nothing important. The important stuff we deal with and solve. The unimportant stuff is stuff we don't know about or where it comes from.
On Thursday I bought a bamboo wind chime, it had some strings and a wooden weight to catch the wind. When the sales woman put it in the bag she said she hoped it didn't get in a tangle. I said if it did I would untangle it. Then I said "Life is a tangle." She looked up at me with a smile and nodded her head.
Part of my sadness is elemental, it's the sadness that knows there always is and always will be untangling to do, mine or someone else's. We are human, we make tangles. I could paraphrase Decartes "I make tangles therefore I am."
I enjoy writing and reading what others write on the Internet, but my systems present almost daily misbehavior and so many of my lovely free hours are spent on the phone waiting to talk to a technician in order to explain my current problem which is usually something they've never heard of. Knowing that I have to do that makes me sad.
Life is unfinished business. Accepting that some of that business will never be finished also makes me sad. I see the children down on the sidewalk going back and forth to the library. I remember some of my own childhood and how I had an unquestioned hope that certain things would surely take place in my life that never did. I feel sad knowing that those youngsters will someday suffer the same disappointments.
I live a reasonably safe and secure life, for which I'm grateful, but I can't help feeling sad for the agonies going on in Japan, Africa and the middle east.
I went into a very friendly family store a few days ago to buy something which was kept behind the counter. The woman said that sooner or later the whole store would be behind the counter because every day something gets stolen. I said "What a shame."
I'm grateful also to have a sense of humor and I know it will get me through the clouds of sorrow that beset me at the moment, but I also know how important it is to embrace the sorrows of life and untangle them.
DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Will you get your act together and answer this question, please?
Only 9 responses so far. Today is your last chance to respond.
Don't let the vagabond clock run out on you.
DB
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4 comments:
I seem to know a little about this sadness in my life as well. It is not about anything in particular, and as you said, it does not last. For me it seems to be about what I have not done in my life that I perhaps had hoped to do at one time. The clock ticks on and my days are getting numbered and it just feels a bit melancholy at times to think of all that I haven't done or will never do. Soon the cloud will lift and I will once again remember all that I have done and will continue to do and my spirits will feel lifted.
Keep staying strong DB, life brings all of us sadness, some of us more than others, but we just need to keep a positive attitude and we'll get thru anything. My "No One Or Nothing Will Get Me Down" works for me. Feel free to use it anytime dear.
Hello. 1st-time visitor to your excellent blog. This post on the blues --or what Churchill called "his big, black dog"-- struck a chord. We all must find ways of shooing it away. But it certainly bears on your winter question: "What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?" I think, after this country woke from a decade of international belligerence, and began to feel the future again, that was the year we realized how much we'd been hobbled and how far we had to go. 1st step on a long road. We need vagabonds. Country could follow claustrophobes (like me, as you may conclude if you visit my blog),I suppose, to some sort of freedom, but who needs the drama? You're on the right track.
Shakespeare was a master at conveying the misunderstood sadness we often feel, even when we can't pinpoint where it comes from. I was devastated when I heard about the catastrophe in Japan, but did you know that a day earlier China also had a devastating earthquake? It was barely mentioned in my local newspaper and I didn't hear a thing about it on TV. We can do nothing about natural events, but when it comes to events that occur in places such as Libya, we can. I signed a petition for that no fly zone and I was happy along with the other hundreds of thousands who also signed it that it finally came to fruition. Meanwhile, even when my small actions amount to something, I continue to pray for the innocent in this world. As the wise Simon in "Lord of the Flies" quipped "what else is there to do?"
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