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Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

Book by Susan Cain · 7 quotes · Longing, Grief, Sorrow

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Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole Quotes

“So many of us love tragic drama, rainy days, tearjerker movies. We adore cherry blossoms--we even hold festivals in their honor--preferring them to equally lovely flowers because they die young. (The Japanese, who love sakura flowers most of all, attribute this preference to mono no aware, which means a desired state of gentle sorrow brought about by "the pathos of things" and "a sensitivity to impermanence").”

“Longing itself is divine," writes the Hindu spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. "Longing for worldly things makes you inert. Longing for Infinity fills you with life. The skill is to bear the pain of longing and move on. True longing brings up spurts of bliss." At the heart of all these traditions is this pain of separation, the longing for reunion, and occasionally, the transcendent achievement of it.”