I know that sadness overcomes you, and it is hard for you to overcome it. I know that sometimes sadness is a morass you fall into.
Do you know what sadness really is? Do you know where it comes from? It comes from the temporality of life on Earth. Sadness has to do with time, time of the past and time of the future. If time is not real, and you do have a vague sense that it is not, then the accompanying sadness is not real either. Attention on what is not real is simply attention on what is not real. Yet it absorbs you.
I understand that your heartache is real enough to you, but you are really rifling through old trunks up in the attic, pulling out old clothes and memories. Or you are looking through the blank pages of your calendar, and fearing what is to come. You see time as ravaging. It takes away what is precious to you, and leaves sadness in its wake. You would eschew time at the same time as you snuggle with it.
You try to remove wrinkles from your neck and fight a losing game. You could be removing attachment, beloveds, and win, for all your sadness is attachment to what seemed to be and will never be again. Beloveds, you might as well mourn every beautiful sunset that goes beneath the horizon, for that exact sunset will not appear again. There is an expression, the snows of yesteryear. Must you mourn them? Must you mourn for that which is gone?
Must your heart be so attached to the past that you can't get it out of your mind? You have difficulty releasing yourself from it. It has released itself from you. You want it to stay, or you want parts of it to stay, and there are parts you want to leave quickly, and yet you hold on to them too. Beloveds, all of the past has to go into the same barrel. It already has said its goodbyes to you. Now it is time for you to wave back at it, or hug it goodbye.
You mourn the memories, and you mourn the lack of memories as well. You mourn what you have forgotten, or forgotten for a moment. You mourn the speed at which the past leaves. Sometimes you want the past to linger, even when you well know you must kiss it goodbye. Anyway, you can only barely reach an illusion with your fingertips of what was always illusion and never was anything else. You remember the oasis that was a mirage, and still you hold its dearness close to you.
Does the fact that the snows of yesteryear melt mean that you must have tears? If you must have tears, have them. Melt the snow in your heart. Melt the longing. Your tears too will finish melting and be gone, and you may mourn them too. You mourn the seeming end of everything, as if your leaving behind what must stay behind seems gauche to you.
You try to pick up all the pieces when there are really no pieces to pick up.
You feel that the end of an era is sad, even when it was an era that you were rushing through lickety-split. You want to keep even that which you don't want. The years seem to gild the edges of life, and even the unprecious becomes precious.
This very moment before you is precious. The arc of the rainbow is right here. I hold it out to you. It is yours. Yesterday's rainbow is gone. Tomorrow's has not yet come. What shall it be, beloveds? Will you accept what I hand to you right now and let the rest go?