Bittersweet

Bittersweet explains where emotions like sorrow, longing, and sadness come from and what their purpose in our lives is, as well as helping us deal with grief, loss, and our own mortality.

During the siege of Sarajevo in 1992, a bomb fell on a marketplace, killing 22 people queuing for food rations that day. The next morning, a man in a tuxedo showed up with a cello. For the next 22 days, he played Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor in plain view, sitting amidst the ruins, commemorating each of the victims.

The man’s name was Vedran Smailović, and if you imagine the scene — a destroyed town square, a man in a suit, a moving string piece of classical music — it’s impossible to separate the beauty of the picture from the pain, chaos, and suffering. That’s the case with all emotions, Cain argues: We can’t have joy without pain, love without loss, or inspiration without despair.

Think about it: If you didn’t feel down on some days, how could finding inspiration feel like it’s lifting you up? If your loved ones weren’t mortal, would you ever miss them? Isn’t the feeling of victory made all the sweeter by the sacrifices we had to endure to attain it?

Feelings live on spectrums, and if we try to avoid only one side of a balance, we’ll end up suppressing our emotions altogether. The next time you feel uncomfortable, remember that the discomfort is only one half of the emotions you are capable of in that moment. Look for the other side of the coin. Find the beauty, inspiration, or serenity that comes with it, and you’ll walk the bittersweet balance of life.

Americans supposedly smile more than any other people in the world, and yet, they also struggle with happiness. According to studies, 30% of Americans will suffer from anxiety at some point in their lives, and 1 in 5 will develop major depression. Cain suggests the habit of smiling goes back to the first American settlers of Calvinist faith. They believed everything in life was preordained, including whether they’d end up in heaven or hell. With such little actual control, people were encouraged to “act like winners” — and that mentality sticks until today. In the west, we think we can “win” at life, in our careers, in relationships, and even against diseases and death itself. In reality, just like not every Calvinist went to heaven, we can’t win at everything, especially not all the time. It’s okay to lose. You can have a bad day, and life still goes on, you know? It’s nice to be nice, but sometimes, you’ll feel like crap, and while you don’t have to…