On Joy and Sorrow

The gift of grief.

There’s a line from Khalil Gibran that always lingers with me, more recently in my heart.

It’s from The Prophet, about sorrow carving deep into us so we can hold more joy.

(Excerpt below)

Over the past five years I’ve lost significant people who shaped who I am.

My Dad, my uncle, three cousins, a great aunt.

More recently, my godmother. Each time something’s chipped away at me I couldn’t quite name. And yet something always stayed behind.

Something quieter, sometimes still. Sometimes aching, sometimes peaceful.

Recently I have found a name for what I’ve been experiencing…

Grief.

Grief’s strange like that, I don’t even know if it’s an emotion.

It moves more like weather, it arrives uninvited and disrupts the routine.

Then leaves behind a sky I see differently.

It’s not just about death, you can grieve a version of yourself.

A role you used to play, a relationship you didn’t know was ending or a body that doesn’t look, feel, move how it used to.

Sometimes we don’t even grieve the person we lost but rather the relationship we could have had with them, but didn’t. I have experienced this too and still somehow sensing what things could have been like, maybe in some other dimension or life time.

I think what connects it all is that grief holds hands with joy. Or maybe it’s shaped by joy. It only hurts because something mattered to us.

This poem isn’t about answers, it’s just an offering.

A moment to sit with what’s real.. S/he who feels it knows it (Jamaican saying).

For anyone holding something heavy or sacred or both. 🙏🏾🖤🙏🏾

On Joy and Sorrow

Kahlil Gibran 1883 –

1931

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow. And he answered: “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.” But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced. When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.”

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