Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

by Susan Cain

This idea—of transforming pain into creativity, transcendence, and love—is the heart of this book.

The bittersweet-melancholic mode, in contrast, can seem backward leaning, unproductive, and mired in longing. It yearns for what could have been, or what might yet be.

But longing is momentum in disguise: It’s active, not passive; touched with the creative, the tender, and the divine.

The place you suffer, in other words, is the same place you care profoundly—care enough to act.

And the message of all these stories, the secret that our poets and philosophers have been trying to tell us for centuries, is that our longing is the great gateway to belonging.

You see, when I think of these events, it is not the sadness that I most remember. It is the union between souls. When we experience sadness, we share in a common suffering. It is one of the few times when people allow themselves to be truly vulnerable. It is a time when our culture allows us to be completely honest about how we feel. [Emphasis added.]