Sadness soothes you. Let’s admit that. You apply sadness sometimes like a salve. You take comfort from all your sad thoughts. Even when they make you cry, you apply your thoughts and find a reassuring comfort. This is okay, you know. What you have to do is to admit this.
Even your sense of guilt carries sweetness. Even your loneliness carries sweetness. You like feeling. You like feeling sadness. Don’t protest. If you didn’t like it, you wouldn’t conjure it so much. Let those tears slide from your eyes. Reap the sadness, and let it go where all sadness goes. It gets purified and flows back again. It gets sweeter and sweeter.
Don’t deny this. You take comfort in what was and is no more. And, yet, what I wish to convey to you, is that the lost events and people you miss exist as much now as they ever did. It’s just that you can’t go back to the time and physical existence they offered. Of course, at the time, the events and people maybe didn’t give you the comfort you take from them now.
And, so, in your very human way, you try to pick up the stitch you dropped so long ago. You were in such a hurry that you didn’t know you had dropped a stitch until you were long past it. So what is it that you cry for, beloveds? For whom is your sadness? It is for you that you cannot mend what you once did not know enough then to prevent and cannot mend now no matter how much you wish to, no matter how much you wish you had once.
The life you passed by so quickly once upon a time, you would get down on your knees to now. You would kiss away tears you once caused another. You would kiss away your complicity in a play you would now act out differently.
Kiss away your own tears now. Bless yourself, and get up off your knees. The sadness of your long-gone past is fleeing. Of course, that very flight contributes to your sadness too. It is another cause for you to be sad that you can’t quite so completely hold on to the sadness that you once held so close to you. Oh, no, you are even losing your total sadness.
Of course, you also have qualms for the future, yet, rather than sadness, qualms for the future may tend to be more like dread. Certainly, sadness is preferable to dread.
Now I suggest that you have gladness for the past and for the future, why not?
For the past, why not be glad that you care? Why not be glad that now you have grown and can see now from a greater perspective than you did then. You would, if you could, go back and change how you reacted back then, but, beloveds, you can’t. You can only tip your hat and say, “Sorry. I’m sorry now. I would love every minute with you now. What an oaf I was not to love every moment with you then. I could kick myself. Now you are very tender to me, and you bring out all the sweetness in me that I was not aware of then and am so acutely aware of now. And so I have grown, and you whom I miss have been part of my growth. I thank you for all that I learned from you. I’m sorry it took me so long to learn. May you know my love now. Maybe you always knew, and I’m the only one who didn’t.
“As for the future, let me forgive myself and let go of events and everybody right now, and regrets will cease to exist.”