Sadness is a hateful emotion.
Children don't understand sadness. Their world is simple: happy or not happy. The first time they experience sadness, they are struck by how peculiar an emotion it is. It doesn't rush in like a gale-force wind. Instead, it's slow, filling the entire body like a heavy, sluggish current.
It drags you down.
Until you're torn from this bustling world and imprisoned deep in the dark earth, where you can hear nothing and your hands and feet grow cold and numb.
That's why, when a child is born, parents always say, "I hope they grow up to be happy."
But when they truly grow up, they discover that sadness is unavoidable. No one can be happy forever.
It is this contrast with sadness that makes us cherish happiness.
And the misfortune and pain scattered across the world are not God's cruel joke, but a reluctant act of kindness.
As the years pass, they discover that sadness lurks in every corner of life, and disaster finds ever-new ways to strike.
