I read somewhere that tears are the river of life. Perhaps that could have come from Louise Hay. That lady knows things. Anyway, these days people keep talking about bliss, happiness, nirvana, awareness and about different ways on how to obtain those. Nowadays it is thought that if you are aware or somehow connected to pure source consciousness that you definitely must always be happy, and never, ever sad. My God!
Awareness is actually seeing the truth. Seeing things as they are. Awareness literally means to see. See and acknowledge happiness, and see and acknowledge sadness as well.
Nevertheless, everybody wants to run away from those tears. God forbid that one should feel sadness. No, no, no! Tears come knocking on our door and off we go into fight or flight response. Sadness approaching. Run for your life. We do not want to greet it under any circumstances.
Why am I writing of such things today? Well, the other day I decided to go out with some friends of mine. Friday night. It was very cold, so I took all my winter gear out. A winter jacket, hat, gloves, the whole works. And there was no way in hell for me to go by bus. My car is my little warm moving rock and roll ACDC house. Perfect. The only problem when driving a car is actually finding a parking space in the city centre. That night I decided not to stress out but go straight to a parking garage. So, I parked my car, got out and whilst still humming the tune of the ACDC song “Thunderstruck”, I saw and stood there frozen in front of the truth that was surrounding me. There were people sleeping in that car park. The row of cars, and the row of people. Refugees. Syria. War. Goodbye joy, and hello sadness. The music stopped and the thunder of reality really did strike this time. Not the one of rock and roll, but the one of sorrow.
On that particular day, my evening had started with music, singing, joy and excitement and ended with Mesa Selimovic, one of my favourite writers, who had written the following line in one of his books: “I do not have two hearts, one for hatred and the other for love. This heart of mine knows only for sadness right now. My prayer and my humility, my life and my death, it all belongs to God, the Creator of the world. As for my sorrow, it belongs to me alone.”
Joy and sadness can and should be equally greeted when they arrive. And that is good. And that is humanity.