It is courageous to cry

I don't remember when did I first begin to view happiness as the absence of sadness. Meaning, if I want to feel happy, then I need to avoid feeling sad. Whatever situations that would cause sadness need to be avoided. I guess the main reason for that was because I wasn't strong enough to face sadness. I didn't know how to deal or cope with it.

But the truth is, no soul can escape sadness as it's one of the core elements in our life. The more we run away from it, the more it'll haunt us. And through sadness, we learn the meaning and value of happiness. But embracing sadness (and all of its ugliness) seems counterproductive at first for me, as it would mean wallowing in tears.. crying is indeed painful when the pain that we have to face is so intense. And of course, who would want to see us cry so intensely? So we usually treat it as something private that we'd have to deal alone, by ourselves. That makes it so much worse, isn't it? Because it allows for loneliness to creep in and increase sadness tenfold. So painful.

So how do we deal with such situations? If running away would only result into it chasing us, would embracing it make us feel better?

There's no one answer to this, because surely it depends on the person. If you aren't ready to face it now, then you need to find ways to prepare yourself to face it. If you're fearful of embracing it, then the fear needs to be addressed first. We're usually fearful of something that we don't know. So learning about the situation that makes us sad would help.

Are we sad because our loved one is pulling away from us? Are we sad that we're not able to carry out our duties well enough? Are we sad that no matter how much effort we're putting in, our situation doesn't seem to improve at all? Understand that these are all valid reasons that would make any of us feel down.

So accept the fact that you're now feeling blue. Don't push it away and suppress it, because sooner or later it'll resurface again in an uglier form. Allow your tears to fall.

If it doesn't feel better yet, it's okay. Sometimes we need more time to process what's happening, and it only makes us human. It doesn't have to be better now. We don't have to buck up and dry our tears now.

Allowing ourselves to express our emotions takes a lot of courage.

And it's courageous to cry.