Sadness

“When you’re depressed, nothing matters. When you’re sad, everything does.” ~ Gloria Steinem

I guess its a fine line, because sadness doesn’t explain itself along the way. Its only after a bout of sadness, when the fog lifts, that you gain the perspective that everything matters. When you’re sad, you’re just sad. Maybe the distinction between depression and sadness is in the intensity and how long it lasts. You still function while you’re sad, go about your day as best you can. Sadness is a weight, but depression is crushing and paralyzing.

Danielle Laporte put it like this,

Sadness hurts but it signals that you are very, very much alive. Depression may be the cousin of sadness, sometimes the defended response to unyielding sadness, but it makes you feel anything but alive. It dulls, weighs, and messes with your memory of your true essential nature — which is that of joy.

Its important to seek to understand the difference, because the cure is likely different. 
For depression, professional help may be necessary, maybe even medication. For sadness, the only cure is to stay with it, feel it deeply and see where it takes you.

I do carry an intense sadness with me most of the times . There are lots of ways to analyze it, but only after the fact, during the time it just feels heavy and hard.

My family and friends always say that they hardly ever see me cry. Truth be known, if I didn’t fill my life up with so much business, I would cry a lot more. Who has time to cry when you’re busy avoiding it.

Life can be sad. Feelings can be confusing. If you take the time to just be, chances are sadness is one of the feelings that will come up. And we don’t do ourselves any favors by suppressing it. 

Singer John Mayer said it well,

The saddest kind of sad is the sad that tries not to be sad. You know, when Sad tries to bite its lip and not cry and smile and go, “No, I’m happy for you? That’s when it is really sad.

We don’t allow ourselves to be sad. We need more sadness. Its honest and healing. But we suppress our sadness with things (food, drugs, work, phones, whatever) because sadness scares us.