Three Reasons You’re Sad and the Truth This Sadness Reveals

Source: iStockPhoto/Archv

It’s a typical weeknight, quiet and uneventful. I’m seated at the dinner table between my mother and father, looking down at my plate, where a small pile of peas remains untouched.

My father glances over, and in a tone expressing both his exasperation and sternness declares, “There are starving children in Africa who’d love to have your food! You’re lucky to have it.” He points to the limp, shriveled peas on my plate and reminds me that each one is a privilege.

I can’t understand his logic. What do my peas have to do with children in Africa? But the message is unmistakable:

Be grateful for what you have, no matter how you feel, because others have it worse.

Reluctantly, I force down my wrinkly peas and swallow his lesson along with them.

I’m okay, but we’re not okay

I heard my father’s message repeatedly throughout my childhood, until, one day, it found its way into my inner dialogue. I began constantly reminding myself, “I should feel grateful.”

Over time, this internal thought became my armor. It shielded me from times of sadness and sorrow. Whenever difficult feelings surfaced, I’d simply recite my mental inventory of blessings and hold tightly to the fleeting relief it brought me. “I’m lucky,” I’d tell myself.

In one way or another, we’ve all mastered this same trick: hiding our sadness and sorrows behind a mask of positivity. From an early age, we’re taught to comfort ourselves with familiar refrains like “I’m fine.” “I’m good.” We’re encouraged to offer others quick reassurances. “It’s nothing.” “Don’t worry about it.” And when someone asks how we are doing, we’ve learned to respond with the evasive, shallow reply, “I’m okay.”

But, in today’s world, we’re not okay. We’re simply holding sorrows at bay, refusing to let them in. Who are these sorrows that keep trying to come home? And why are they so determined in the first place? As we’re about to discover, they carry an important truth we need to hear.

Our Three Sorrows

I. Our first sorrow is universal. It is the sorrow of life itself.

Our childhoods are unique, but we share a common thread. We start full of promise, prepared to receive life's very best. But, invariably, that promise falters: Traumas and losses arrive on the scene, pulling us away from the life we hoped for. We suffer, and every heart knows it is breaking.

From the last great ice age to a world shaped by global warming; from small, quiet villages to sprawling, modern cities, one truth unites us across time and place: Everything we treasure, all that we hold dear, will one day be lost.

To be human is to face the universal sorrow of trauma and loss.

2. Our minds, shaped by over 200,000 years of human evolution, are wired to expect the presence of others in times of loss, grief, heartache, and trauma. We can’t help but imagine villagers gathering around us, extending tender, open arms to hold us close, creating a space for our anguish to pour out freely.

Our pain was always meant to be shared, not carried alone. Our healing was always meant to come from the presence of others, not from going it alone.

But, all too often, the villagers we longed for failed to appear. No one came.

Unable to heal on our own, we’ve had little choice but to silently carry our traumas and losses. We’ve stored them in our hearts as emotional imprints and in our bodies as physiological memories. There they live, unspoken and unreleased, for years — sometimes, for a lifetime.

This sorrow, of shouldering our suffering in isolation, is one our modern culture expects us all to bear.

3. Care isn’t just for moments of crisis. We’re built to depend on a steady presence of soothing voices, welcoming gazes, and heartfelt embraces. We need these gentle affirmations to remind us of how deeply we’re loved and how much we matter in the interconnected web of life.

Personal Perspectives Essential Reads

A Treaty With Time and a Brief Respite From Efficiency

Behold My ADD Maelstrom!

Far too often, what we’re met with instead is an unsettling silence, no one arriving to deliver the care or attention we require. In moment after moment, we’re left without the warmth and connection we’re meant to receive. We’re left with the ache of loneliness.

In response, we turn inward again: we hide our emotions and guard our hearts from a world indifferent to their sensitivity.

Even now, we’re still hoping the people will come. We’re still waiting for the villagers to arrive, bringing their caring presence with them. Their ongoing absence is a cultural sorrow we know all too well.

What happens when we listen to our sorrows

Early in childhood, we encounter all three of these sorrows. They settle within us as a felt memory, living on as physical imprints and emotional echoes.

It’s high time we welcome our sorrows back home and hear what they’ve been trying to tell us all this time:

Our lives have been narrowed and radically reduced.

We want a life filled with the ease and comfort of knowing we’ll always be welcome. We want to live in a world where we’re seen, understood, and embraced by others, just as we are.

When these needs go unmet in childhood, we’re left without the care we need in moments of trauma and loss and we struggle with a lack of connection in daily life.

To cope, we answer a cultural call to achieve, acquire, and distract ourselves. We’re promised these pursuits will ease our suffering. But they fall far short because this isn’t how we soothe sorrows.

The antidote to sorrow lies in something given without cost: the care and comfort of those who truly know us. That’s why our genuine journey lies in walking the path that leads to these gifts:

We’re called to rediscover, reimagine, and then reinvent something timeless—modern versions of our ancestral villages, communities where we’ll consistently be warmly received.

Our sorrows act as our compass, guiding us toward this true north—a home found in connection with one another. The clearest sign of where we’re meant to go lies in the sorrow we feel when that home is withheld from us.