Can Happiness and Grief Coexist?
Life can be both brutal and beautiful.
And very often the question arises: can happiness and grief coexist?
What do you think? Can you be both happy and sad at the same time? The immediate answer would be no. Can someone be both hopeful and desolate? Can you exist in that in between? Can life look bright and grim? All at the same fricking time?
Grief and happiness can coexist. Yes. We do that all the time. All. Damn. Time.
We believe our life is mainly overshadowed by grief and still we end up finding those little pockets of happiness throughout the day. Happiness is in the little acts you do. It can be found in those small smiles shared, kindness done, kisses flown, hugs offered, words spoken.
I wonder if you can be both hopeful and uncertain at the same time… about whatever change you’re facing in life? Is it so?
Is uncertainty the opportunity to show your hope? Is that the proof of it? Is it okay to want to be happy when you’re scared or grieving or in pain? Is it okay to look forward to better time? Yes!
Is that betrayal? Is it okay to think about grief when you’re happy, just remembering it, because it was once there? Is that betrayal?
“And if happiness should surprise you again, do not mention its previous betrayal. Enter into the happiness, and burst.”
– Mahmoud Darwish
can happiness and grief coexist?
What’s it like when happiness and grief become roommates? Do they get along well? Or do they never talk at all? What does it do to your mental stability?
Life looks different that way. You love yourself but you also can’t stand yourself.
You’re at crossroads and both paths extend ahead on either side of you, but there’s no clear direction. One path would be…choosing, the other path would be…changing.
Happiness would choose you (if you let it). Grief would change you (only if you let it).
To let go of grief would be to let go of your old self who’d thrive, survive in grief. To choose happiness would be to actually take steps to change yourself and shed your old skin and rejuvenate in a way.
You forget that you were given the choice to make a choice, and you decide to choose a path—doesn’t matter which one (that doesn’t play a role here).
Why? Because, by not making a clear, decisive choice, you choose both. You choose one path and spend your whole life thinking about the other. What if…what if…what if…?
Let’s not get into that regret.
The question is not, can happiness and grief coexist? It’s not between happiness and grief, what would I choose? The question, it seems, is—what will I focus more on? Because, both are there for your taking.
Both happiness and grief will be here. There’s no doubt. Both of them. Simultaneously. Here. What will you focus on—more?
You’re at the crossroads. You choose either happiness or grief.
Will you choose happiness and worry about grief your whole life? Will you choose grief and wonder what it would’ve been like had you chosen the other path? Or will you let both come to you, however they do, and choose to live your life with everything you’ve got?
My immediate response to a question such as this is to dismiss it. But further thinking prompts us to address the issue of how we might be letting beautiful moments of our life go by just fostering a dislike for what’s happening currently in the moment.
If you can change your current circumstances, you should. If you can’t, why bother? I know, it might be worrying, scary, uncertain, hopeless—but if the story begins with you not being able to do anything about it, and the story ends with you still not being able to do anything about it, it seems…counter-intuitive to keep thinking about something that won’t change.
Why bother ourselves? Let’s look at life like a journey. Like happiness is something we have to choose and grief something we have to dodge.
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