But such experiences, however wholly unwelcome, often appear to leave those who undergo them in a new and more honest relationship with time. The question is whether we might attain at least a little of that same outlook in the absence of the experience of agonising loss. Writers have struggled to convey the particular quality that this mode of being infuses into life, because while ‘happier’ is wrong, ‘sadder’ doesn’t convey it, either. You might call it ‘bright sadness’ (as does the priest and author Richard Rohr), ‘stubborn gladness’ (the poet Jack Gilbert), or ‘sober joy’ (the Heidegger
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