Sadness is somewhat like an old bathrobe that feels oh so comfortable to you. You've had it forever, worn it again and again. It holds sentimental value. How you want to keep this old bathrobe. You like to hold on to the past, even its sadness. Sometimes, especially its sadness.

Does this old bathrobe gave meaning to your life as it spotlights sadness? You don't want to part with sadness even as you wish you didn't have it. Of course, you could live without this remnant from the past. You can live without it, yet you don't.

You haven't been quite able to pack this old relic into the attic trunk. Nope, you seem to desire to make past sadness easily available when you happen to want to bring it out for old time's sake.

Somehow you relegate tears to this old bathrobe as if the tears were valuable diamonds. This old thing has worn well in the sense that it doesn't look so raggedy that you must throw it out right away. Your eyes mist over the holes the robe is full of.

This bathrobe from the old days never was beautiful. You never quite saw it as it really was, and so you hang onto this bathrobe of sadness now as though it were special. This bathrobe is a dime a dozen. Such bathrobes hang in many closets. They hang in too many closets.

You really can move out that old bathrobe now. Don't hang it in your closet any longer. What do you think you need it for anyway? You are already an expert on sadness. Your life really comes down to more than a piece of old cloth.

How did sadness and happiness get so mixed up anyway? In truth, out of the sway of the world, there are no opposites to savor.

This is not love you hold for the past of yesterday, yet you desire to deify sadness and keep it holy. You want to keep sadness stable and consistent, ready to be called on at a moment's notice, to pull it out whenever you feel like it, substituting the past for life.

Swell in love rather than sadness. Why on Earth would My children hold on to sadness with all their might? What is the point of it? Reliving the moments when your heart got seared? Truly, can you not brand your heart with something new and more memorable?

Happiness is not all that radical as you may think it is in that dark closet of your mind. It may well be a good idea for you to stay out of the stuffed closet altogether. What is it, really, that you must have a storeroom for?

When you move on in life, what do you really have to keep as a keepsake? Why keep the past warm, or heat it up? Why set the past up before you when the past is past and cannot return? Can the past be likened to a pint or quart of ice cream that you like to pull out of the freezer and eat it up all by yourself?

Do you say: "Yum-yum." Do you say: "I will never do this again." And yet the yearning returns soon enough.

Why freeze the past? Rather free yourself from the past. The past is over. You can't keep beer on tap forever.

Why melt the past when you are on the verge of a new dawn? Pull off that old bathrobe. Get out of bed and walk into This Very Moment of a New Day. Time, which actually doesn't exist, certainly isn't permanent. You can't make it permanent. This moment is ever-passing. It's gone the minute you notice it.

Time does not exist, and yet there is no time to waste on the past. Say, "Nighty-nite" to the past. Time is not forever. Infinity is.