A buddy of mine, prone to sadness and maybe way too much self-reflection, once said that the sight of a particularly beautiful woman on his morning bus-ride threw him into a deep melancholy.
Which cracked me up.
But I think I knew what he meant. For me, sometimes while playing music, during a ballad when the bar is quiet and listening to the sad words, and we’re a group of strangers staring into beers, more or less sharing some inner experience even if none of us could put outward words on it, then I feel a sort of sadness, a small urge to cry.
Small things. Like seeing someone do something truly kind to someone else.
And it’s always the good things that brings on sadness. Far more than the bad.
So why? Why should melodies, stories, paintings, acts of kindness, physical beauty on city buses–why should the very best there is, trigger sadness?
I think there’s a deeper, wiser part inside us all that knows to its visceral core the real score about being alive. A part of us that can lie dormant for months, even years sometimes; I picture a pool of water inside a deep, dark cavern, far from daily life above, water so still it’s hard and cold and easily forgotten as a mirror.
But once in a long while, some small event reaches down there and disturbs it; tiny fingertips in that pool, sending tiny ripples of recall, reminding us once again that this, this won’t always be here, none of it.
And you want to cry because whatever you just witnessed, however small, is exactly the kind of thing you’ll miss when it’s all gone.
Being Alive is Weird 