Light and Shadow

The best of us, are at times incapable of handling feelings of sadness and grief by ourselves. Our whole life is centered towards bringing in happiness forgetting that light can cast shadow too. We are often under the wrong impression that being happy means being in the state of everlasting bliss.

You need tears to soften your heart, just like rain softens the parched land. Without experiencing sadness and sorrow, there is no way we will learn to recognize happiness. Everything in life is relative, every emotion, every feeling has an opposite emotion. It is not only impossible but also not healthy to be happy all the time. High tide brings you gifts from far away, but only in low tides are we able to recognize and gather them.

Sadness is powerful, carrying you away with its force. Struggling or pretending to feel anything else is only going to prolong the cure. Hearts are strange that way, some fragile, breaking into pieces at the slightest blow, while others softening with each disappointment. People who are projecting a happy image, just so that their loved ones don't feel their pain, are the worst in recovering.

Even the happiest of us all go through phases of feeling low at times. Call it mood swings or nature's way of balancing, but just when you think you are strong enough, have been hardened enough by life to face any adversity in life with a smile, the monstrous head of grief pops up.

A little bit of sadness is what keeps us humane, but the realization that we are not as strong as we thought we were can throw us off guard and shake our confidence to the core. It is easy to ignore and pretend that all is fine , that you are unaffected by the disappointments and heartbreak, to just smile and march on, keeping all the feelings deep in. Negative feelings are strange, ignore them and they become intense. 

Quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Men are made for happiness, and he who is completely happy has the right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.” 

“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.” 

“To love someone means to see them as God intended them.” 

“If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.” 

“I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.” 

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” 

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” 

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.” 

“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.” 

“One man doesn't believe in god at all, while the other believes in him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men!” 

Quotes on Beauty

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
― Franz Kafka

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.” 

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” 

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” 

“You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”