I have been feeling a bit sad lately. For some reason, it almost seems radical to admit to feeling sad even on a platform like this, a blog read only by a few. On principle, I am against suppressing emotions deemed as negative like sadness and anger in order to seem more put together in the eyes of other people. Of course, there is a time and place for expressing such emotions, but at the end of the day, they demand to be felt anyway. One could say that they are a necessary evil. The Buddhists would say that they are the inescapable core of our existence, the fundamental experience (i.e. life is suffering). It makes me sad when my friends and loved ones tell me that they cannot recall the last time they cried, or that when faced with tragedy of any grade they just sucked it up and moved on with their lives. Me being against not facing one’s feelings (especially the unpleasant ones), I am on the flip side all for vulnerability. Vulnerability is not the same as being weak, or letting others walk over you. There is this common obstacle on the path to being vulnerable, which is the fear of looking weak in the eyes of others. This weakness would make us isolated; we would no longer be seen as equal to our peers, we would not be treated with the same respect and so on. I believe this is a misconception. By not sharing the weak moments and by being afraid of failing and avoiding failure at any cost, it becomes highly impossible for others to relate to us. Everyone fails. Everyone goes through hard times and bad days. What kind of person does it make someone who is no longer a part of ’everyone’ by always succeeding and never being sad? I think it makes them inhuman and truly isolated.

So, we have come to the conclusion that it is truly ok and natural to feel sad and to mess up from time to time. Although I think we would still all agree that sadness is a state of mind that you would rather have replaced with a feeling that is considered more positive. I do personally think that there is beauty and value to every feeling on the spectrum, but I also think that being in a good mood makes life flow just that much easier. Furthermore, when feeling things like sadness or loneliness, the human psyche makes it nearly impossible for us to seize in the moment and recognize the value of the discomfort. This acceptance and even appreciation for the lower moments in our lives usually only come to us when we view things in retrospect, and see how the bad times made it possible for us to get to the present, happier place. It always helps to find ways to cope with the more unwanted emotions, as they are going to be a part of this game we call life anyway, whether we like it or not. The Middle Eastern philosopher Al-Kindi had a thing or two to say about this, and in fact, wrote a treatise called ”On the means of dispelling sorrows” which, if I remember correctly, was something Al-Kindi wrote to a disciple or friend of some sort as advice on how to not be so overwhelmed by – you guessed it – sorrow. His whole point basically revolves around the notions that we feel grief when we lose something, and that pain is something that should be avoided.

We have all been there. Our pet goldfish or rat or beloved family dog died, and we feel immense hopelessness and grief before this cruel world that took away that what was precious to us. Al-Kindi thought that all sorrow stems from being overly attached to our possessions and the blessings life has granted us, and that these attachments ultimately lead to a lot of pain when lost. How he would advise to go around this would be to place our attachment on things that cannot be taken away from us, and refining our values. Thus, in order to avoid grief, one must find pleasure in what the intellectual realm offers, and not strive for accumulating a lot of material goods like a nice house and fast cars, as they can disappear as fast as they appeared. Those who are the most invulnerable are the philosophers; those placing the most value on endeavors of the mind. However, Al-Kindi does not say we should stay away from bodily and material pleasures altogether, but that we should neither try to actively attain them nor avoid them. We should simply allow them to come and go. Even maybe let ourselves be happy for a nice external thing the universe grants us, but not be angered when said thing goes on to other things and no longer is ours. In fact, Al-Kindi says that nothing we deem as ours has been ours in the first place. Perhaps it is helpful to think of possessions as borrowed goods, that will someday, sooner or later, have to be returned to their rightful owner. You are lucky enough already only to have gotten your share of this nice thing (person, place, experience), whatever it may be.

I do not agree with Al-Kindi that pain is something to be avoided, because in order to escape it, at least on his terms we would have to become ascetic and isolated from what our fellow humans are going through. The (constant) absence of pain would reduce the fact that we are just fragile, fleeting beings that could at any moment be wiped off the face of the earth due to any odd sequence of events which we have no control over anyway. Maybe Al-Kindi saw this as a sorrow-inducing realization to come to, and saw getting rid of attachment as a way to not having to come face to face with it too often. I agree that it can be a borderline paralyzing notion, but I do think that it is a thought that when faced (not just once but again and again in different stages of one’s life) will ultimately lead to supreme vulnerability. Supreme vulnerability has nothing to do with you being scared your friend would see you as a failed human being if you would admit to her that you were having a bad day. Supreme vulnerability would be this, but on the universal scale (wow I’m sorry I will try to think of a better name for this than supreme vulnerability). It demands you tell your friend you are not doing so great even at the risk of her realizing that you are not immune to sorrow. It demands that you own up to your own fragility and imperfection, and learn to roll with the punches life throws at you with grace, knowing that you can’t really do shit about what you are fundamentally – which is a being that is significant in its insignificance, perfect in its imperfection and capable of seeing the good side of even the bad stuff – at least in retrospect.