We celebrate happiness, its warmth, its allure, its sunshiney nature. We extoll its virtues, chase its fleeting glow, pursue its richness. But what of sadness, its counterpart? We shun it, dismiss it, rush to banish its presence. When someone speaks of the blues, we scramble to lift their spirits, to paint over grey skies with forced sunshine.

But what if the blues held equal value? What if the lows were as essential as the highs? Physics reminds us: for every action, an equal and opposite reaction. Happiness and sadness, then, are not enemies, but inseparable companions, two sides of the same coin. Like magnetic poles they are forever drawn together, creating the emotional field we inhabit.

A woman I know begins each day with deliberate sorrow, twenty minutes of tears before facing the world. A release, a conscious acknowledgment of the pain that surrounds us. “There is so much pain and suffering in this world. So much over which I have little control. My tears are my antidote to helplessness creating much needed grace and space for joy to flow,” she explains. “I can’t go around it. I must go through it.” And so, to journey through sadness, she builds a bridge of tears to carry her to the other side.

On rainy days like today, when the sky is a heavy grey, the wind a mournful cry, the blues invite us to pause, to feel. To surrender.

In these moments, the blues become a necessary antidote to our fears. They remind us of the cyclical nature of life, the inevitable return of light after darkness. Like the tides, life ebbs and flows. To truly embrace its mystery, we must welcome both the sun and the storm, the joy and the blues. We must stop chasing the blues away and welcome in every facet of the richness of our emotional experience awash in the sea of life.

To help you build a bridge through sadness to happiness, here are three simple practices you can implement today:

• Embrace Morning Tears: Dedicate a few minutes each morning to acknowledge and release sadness. Start with five minutes of quiet reflection, allowing whatever emotions arise to surface. If tears come, let them flow. If not, simply sit with the feeling, accepting its presence without judgment.
• Curate an Emotional Soundtrack: Create a playlist that reflects the full spectrum of your emotions. Begin with songs that resonate with sadness or the blues, allowing yourself to feel those emotions fully. Then, transition to songs that uplift and inspire, creating a journey from sorrow to joy.
• Journal Your Blues: Alongside your gratitude practice, create a space to acknowledge your struggles. Write down what upsets you, what makes you feel helpless, or what triggers your sadness. Giving voice to these feelings through writing can be a powerful step towards processing and moving through them.

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This post originally appeared on my SUBSTACK March 19, 2025