Being sad is a natural emotional response to being alive in this world. The world can be sad sometimes, and life can be sad sometimes. People quarrel, people leave, things don’t go the way they should, we fall down. Being sad is a perfectly fine reaction to the overwhelm and difficulties of being a person.

There’s nothing wrong with being sad

There will be people around you who don’t allow you to feel sad, who tell you not to cry, or who are not comfortable with you showing emotion. Maybe you were taught to suppress or hide your emotions. Maybe you had to pretend to be happy so that you could get through school without too much trouble. But suppressing emotions is never the answer. The suppressed emotions linger somewhere within you, and they never disappear unless they are expressed.

So give yourself and permission and the space to cry when you need to. Allow yourself to feel the full force of your sadness and let it infuse your being. Let your entire being reverberate with great sorrow, and cry as much as you need to. That is perfectly okay.

Being sad means you care for something

Sadness is a soft emotion, linked to care and compassion. If you can feel sadness, you must care about something. What do you care about? People? Animals? The environment? Find out what you care about and start showing your care through your actions. Let the world know you care.

Emotion without action is just drama. Sure, we can be sad and mope around, feeling our emotions as a burden and victimising ourselves about how sad we are. But that doesn’t move us or the world forward. Moping around and feeling like a victim isn’t empowering for ourselves.

Emotions are the key driver to human behaviour. Ability to feel sadness means that you have great emotional depth and resources. You can channel your depth of feeling into something constructive, something that benefits the world. By doing that, you also grow as a person.

So what is it that calls to you, through your sadness? What is it you care about? How will you express your caring in this world?

Ability to feel is strength

Sometimes when our feelings overwhelm us, we want to shut our feelings off and ignore them. Sometimes we also try to numb our feelings.

Do not numb your sadness. Numbing your sadness means numbing positive emotions like joy and happiness as well. Cutting off our emotions is cutting off the very thing that makes us human. Cutting off emotions is cutting off the source of what makes life rich and rewarding.

Feeling deeply may feel like weakness, but is actually strength. Many people walk this earth going through life like a robot, never truly feeling sadness or anger, but also never truly feeling connection and joy.

We are lucky to still be able to feel. Through our feeling and emotions we can find what truly moves us in this life. Through understanding our emotions we understand ourselves and who we are, what matters to us as people.

Yes, it sucks to feel sometimes. But what you will realise is that as the pain falls away, what arises is tranquility and equanimity. When we feel the pain, understand it, and let go, freedom arises.