The Sorrow

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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