Towards Interconnected Joy and Sorrow (an example)

Bittersweet: (adj) being at once bitter and sweet especially : pleasant but including or marked by elements of suffering or regret

One evening when we were sitting in our common area, David said, "Hey guys, I have something to tell you."

"I got a job."

"But they want me to start right away, so I'm gonna be leaving in a week and a half."

Bittersweet.

I am so incredibly excited for David. He basically got his dream job, working at an ocean education and conservation organization. What an incredible opportunity. I have seen first hand how working with and even just talking about this organization gasses him up.

But, we're losing a community member. I'm losing someone who understood mental health. I'm losing a calm force in the house. Nate is losing his roommate and coworker. (the other) David is losing the other extrovert. We're losing the person who did the dishes every night because he wanted to. It feels like we're going to have to start this community over again and completely readjust to new dynamics.

Yet, I also have a feeling of hope. I think that David leaving is going to provide us challenges as a community and as individuals. There are going to be opportunities for growth that we wouldn't have had to step into if David were here.

I wrote a blog post before about what interconnected joy and sorrow looks like, but little did I know that I would have such a perfect example.

My current understanding of interconnected joy and sorrow is that correlation does not equal causation. I was at the same time happy and sad about David's move, but it was not my joy for his job that caused my sadness at his leaving or vice versa. Both emotions were connected to the same event, but not necessary connected to each other.

It is okay and normal to have multiple and even conflicting emotions about the same event. It is not that sorrow exists in one moment and joy is not far behind. It is that they exist simultaneously. In the same moment as one emotion comes into existence, so does the other.

What I have not yet figured out, is how to respect both/all emotions. Society tells me to favor the positive emotion. Depression tells me to favor the negative.

What does it look like to allow yourself to simultaneously feel sad and glad? How do you sit in that tension? How do you express that?

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