I look back with a mix of emotions: sadness for the people who are gone, nostalgia for times that have passed, but immense gratitude for the wonderful opportunities that came my way.
Reading Ngo Tu Lap's poems, terrible nostalgia wells up in me- nostalgia for a lost time and a far-gone country, nostalgia for people I've loved, and for creatures of forests and rivers. I feel gratitude too. War is over. Peace arrives with these beautiful poems.
When sadness comes, just sit by the side and look at it and say, "I am the watcher, I am not sadness," and see the difference. Immediately you have cut the very root of sadness. It is no more nourished. It will die of starvation. We feed these emotions by being identified with them.
But now the joy is gone and the sadness is back, the sadness feels like something deserved, the price of some not-quite-forgotten betrayal.
Literature is always about bygone times. It's always looking back in time with a certain perspective. I look at bygone life which no longer exists, and as I said, I look at it without nostalgia but without anger, either. I look at it with criticism and with compassion. I look at it with curiosity.
SADNESSES OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[tic]ated birds; Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety sadness.
I believe nostalgia has many appearances and that it's not just the privilege of adults. I think children too can have nostalgia. It's one of mankind's most shared emotions. It's one of the things that makes us human. When you live, you lose things. It's a fact of life. So it's natural for everyone to have nostalgia.
Nostalgia is a way of remembering people and places and things, and wishing things hadn't changed. It has a sweetness to it. Sadness is just--well--being sad.
Nostalgia is one of the legitimate and certainly one of the most enduring of human emotions; but the politics of nostalgia is at best distracting, at worst pernicious.
Emotions are lovely. Even if they fall to the negative for a time. The sun will rise again another day. The sadness perhaps never forgotten, but a new day enjoyed in another way. A way that could not have been but for the sadness’s existence.
In some quiet way, the expression and feelings of gratitude have a wonderful cleansing or healing nature. Gratitude brings warmth to the giver and the receiver alike.
No one ever said learning was to be easy, but it's part of the process of evolving as a human being, and we all have to go through it. When I look back, I see that each difficult time brought an important lesson. And I prefer to look at it with gratitude because I wouldn't be who I am today if I haven't gone through it all.
I feel very strongly that you shouldn't mix your emotions with business. When it comes to my emotions, I certainly don't mix them with my business.
I stay true to my lyrics. If I go back and look at them in hindsight, the emotions I had when I wrote them have passed. It feels unjustified to change them.
Like, for example, way back then,[George W.] Bush could have passed immigration reform, just like [Barack] Obama could have when he first came in. And both of them passed on it, so now they leave it for now.
The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides in the immense sorrow that has gone before....our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
Don't believe you have to travel far and wide to discover opportunities. The best opportunities will always be found in your own back yard, and not half way around the world in someone else's backyard. You have to look for them, however.