Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

by Susan Cain

“bittersweet”: a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world.

It’s an authentic and elevating response to the problem of being alive in a deeply flawed yet stubbornly beautiful world.

we should strive “to participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.”

The compassionate instinct is also a fundamental aspect of the human success story—and one of the great powers of bittersweetness. The word compassion literally means “to suffer together,”