The Sadness That Forever Changes You

There is a certain special kind of sadness.

Now, it is true that man wastes his existence. That he spends it caring and obsessing over the most fleeting and contemptable things. That he chases pleasure which may takes years to cultivate, but only seconds to abandon him.

But the sadness hitting him now cannot be compared to this.

Now, he has been left like a stray dog in the desert. Body emaciated. Tongue hanging out. Legs only just heaving him through the scorching sands.

“Water… please… water.”

This is a special kind of sadness. Only a handful of such moments come by in a person’s life.

Yes, man wastes his life. Indeed, he is always at his lowest point because every day is virtually the same. The same problems arise. The same anxieties punch his gut. The longing for more never leaves him.

But do not mistake this sadness — this special kind of sadness — for man’s daily plight. This sadness does not appear in the day, nor in the night. It strikes when a man least expects it, when the concept of day and night march out of his mind. When the very idea of days, weeks, and years dissolve into nothingness.

Because what he feels he right now has transported him to another dimension. To a place where he does not know up from down and left from right. He is, truly, shaken.

How did it creep up on him like this? How could he be so unprepared?

Surely the Devil himself has cast a curse — a curse which has taken a hold of him just now.

Have you seen the Niagara Falls? Did you know that almost 3,000 tonnes of water flow over the falls every second, hitting the bottom at a speed of almost 70 miles per hour? The water flies like rockets firing down at the ground.

This sadness hits a man like this. All that water — all those rockets — are firing right into his head. As far as he knows, this is it.

It’s over.

Whatever he’s done in his life, it’s led him to this moment. To call this moment torture is to call a headshot wound a scratch. Something or someone has arrived at the glass house of his mind with a baseball bat. They won’t stop till this house is nothing but a rubble of shards.

Life broken. Mind broken. Thoughts, feelings, memories — life itself — . Shattered.

It has no comparison. It strikes neither at day nor night. One cannot prepare for it. One will not win against it.

But as the last of the glass furniture is smashed to a million fragments, and our assailant is finishing up with his bat, man gathers himself and focuses his vision to weakly look in front.

He sees a crossroad.

Does he build a new house? Does he go through therapy? Does he confide in his friends? All of life’s coping mechanisms lay in front of him. Will he take his pick?

This crossroad has another path. A path that his eyes could never see before. A path that, he realises must have always been there, but the fogs of daily life had kept hidden.

But this path hides no longer: The weather reaches its calmest state only after a storm.

He realises he has spent his whole life only building glass houses. Spent saying that he likes this, and dislikes that. That he believes in this, and rejects that. That what he really loves is this, and what he really hates is that.

And, inevitably, when a pebble, a rock, a boulder, or an assailant with a bat arrives, he feels the pain of broken glass.

Let the pile of shards from what was once his house rest where they do. With time, the winds will clear them away. There’s no need to recycle them, because the path that was chosen was not the one that required any new building.

Our assailant is kicking himself. Our man is now thanking him.

Never again will there be anything to break.