The Happy/Sad

A random thought...Isn’t it strange how sad some people can look even when they’re smiling? 

In my early 20’s my three best pals who were like brothers to me were in a band that I managed.  Collin, the band’s keyboard player/ keytarist referred to the intricate piano melodies he’d compose as the genre of the happy/sad.  Major keys tinkling out a softly melancholy tune.  “It's like smiling, but crying at the same time," he would say.  I sought to understand this precarious emotion better, after all they were polar opposites somehow playing out simultaneously. 

Maybe the actual word for it is bittersweet.  It’s both bitter and sweet, could there be a more perfect contradiction?  Life’s most wonderful things are unequivocally bittersweet or happy/sad.  Perhaps because all of life is ephemeral.  We're just ants on a giant rock hurtling through space...  One can be optimistic about the future, that there is something hopeful in thinking about the fact that you're alive today, and tomorrow will come, yet also a certain melancholy in yesterday, that the things that are behind you, are now truly behind you... 

In Buddhist tradition life is transitory, and suffering is caused by attachment to impermanent things.  In Christianity life on earth is only the first step to eternal life with God.  The only permanence being our relationship with God.  Ignatius of Antioch called it a “disordered attachment”.  Meaning attachment to transient material things does not glorify God.  Leaving space for evil to attack, taking us away from God thereby creating suffering.  Though it is still possible for suffering to exist even when we walk close to God and are conscious and detached from material things.  Perhaps suffering, the bittersweet, the happy/sad are just part of the human condition.  

When we leave this life we leave with only what we were born into this world with, nothing.  So why do material things control our earthly lives?  At the end of the day material things are not satisfying.  The richest people in the world with the most toys are often not the happiest.  In fact often the opposite.  Superficial things always disappoint.  Much like Citizen Kane whispering "Rosebud" at the end of his life.  We are most wistful for the simple experiential things.

So in a transient world, what besides our connection to God is everlasting?  Love lasts.  People, relationships, friendships, family, and authentic love, are the most worthwhile things in life.  God is ultimately love.  To know love is to walk closer to God.  And perhaps in the end we are happy to have experienced it, but sad because life in and of itself is fleeting...