Redtree Times

GC Myers- Early Experiment in Ink 1993-4

The word sadness originally meant “fullness,” from the same Latin root, satis, that also gave us sated and satisfaction. Not so long ago, to be sad meant you were filled to the brim with some intensity of experience. It wasn’t just a malfunction in the joy machine. It was a state of awareness– setting the focus to infinity and taking it all in, joy and grief all at once. When we speak of sadness these days, most of the time what we really mean is despair, which is literally defined as the absence of hope. But true sadness is actually the opposite, an exuberant upwelling that reminds you how fleeting and mysterious and open-ended life can be. That’s why you’ll find traces of the blues all over this book, but you might find yourself feeling strangely joyful at the end of it. And if you are lucky enough to feel sad, well, savor it while it lasts– if only because it means that you care about something in this world enough to let it under your skin.

― John Koenig, introduction to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

I watched part of a YouTube video of a presentation by the late James Kavanagh the other day. His Wikipedia entry says that Kavanagh (1928-2009) was an American Catholic priest, author, and poet best remembered for his 1967 book, A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church. It was a call for the church to move from its antiquated past become a church of compassion and love. It was a controversial bestseller at the time and Kavanagh soon after left the priesthood.

That wasn’t how I knew him. I knew him from the books of poetry he wrote that were not mentioned on his Wikipedia page. One, There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves, was first published in 1970 and has went though 50+ printings and has sold over a million copies, making it one of the most popular books of poetry ever published. I don’t know that it will ever rival the verse or longevity of the immortal poets but it is effective popular, straightforward poetry that wears its emotion on its sleeve, meant to be easily absorbed. Simple verses for complex feelings. I knew this book and its title poem well in my teens. It served a great purpose for me, helping form a lot of my goals and ideals at the time.

But in this video Kavanagh spoke about his embrace of the sadness that was always with him, how it was an essential part of who he was as human being. It wasn’t something to be hidden or avoided.

I understood immediately what he meant by this. I often experience a sense of sadness that is far different from despair. It is not joy or elation either. It is hard to describe but it almost seems like a form of pleasure that comes in being moved by the extremes of the human condition, as though it validates our own humanity, our own place in the world. A recognition of those common experiences– good and bad– that we all share in our time here.

Reading the words at the top from the introduction to the John Koenig book, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, brought it into better perspective. The sadness that I know is, indeed, a fullness — an exuberant upwelling that reminds you how fleeting and mysterious and open-ended life can be. 

One can’t fully appreciate the human condition without knowing at least a little bit of that sadness.

I no longer try to stifle this sadness in myself and am easily moved by displays of human emotion that involve feelings of empathy, concern, courage, and tenderness.

The despair I feel most often comes from witnessing the acts of those who feel little of these same feelings. People without empathy. The selfish and the greedy. The hateful and the spiteful.

The unfeeling and the unloving.

I don’t know what this means this morning or why I am sharing this. Maybe you’ve felt a sadness that you don’t understand. But it somehow makes you feel a bit more human, a bit more alive. Maybe it’s just that you’re aware of the fullness of this human life.

Hmm…

It also helps explain the joy and fullness of feeling that often comes in listening to the blues. About as human a form of expression that there is. Here’s the great Elmore James with It Hurts Me Too.