Sadness Is on Me

Have you ever felt so sad, or so angry, that it seemed impossible to imagine feeling any other way?

In English, we often say, “I am sad.” “I am angry.” “I am anxious.” Grammatically, it is simple. Emotionally, though, I sometimes wonder what that phrasing does to us. It can make it feel as though we are the feeling, as if sadness has swallowed our entire identity.

Then a friend once told me that, in another language, an emotion can be expressed more like this:

“Sadness is on me.”

That immediately painted a completely different picture in my mind. I imagined sadness as a little elf or fairy resting on my shoulder.

Suddenly, there is me, and there is sadness. We are two separate entities.

And perhaps the most comforting part is the word “on.”

If sadness is on me, then eventually, it can get off.

Think of a hat. It is on your head, but you can remove it. Books are on a shelf, but they can be moved, rearranged, or taken away entirely. The state of one thing being “on” another quietly implies that the arrangement may not last forever.

What a freeing thought.

Our emotions are certainly ours to feel. They are generated somewhere within us, and sometimes they feel enormous. But maybe they do not have to become our entire definition.

This idea also changed the way I think about pleasant emotions. Happiness, joy, love, excitement. If they can exist slightly apart from us, perhaps we can look at them more clearly, hold them more gently, and appreciate them while they are here.

It is easier to hug a friend than to hug yourself. Self-hugs are underrated, of course, but unless you have spent ten years practicing yoga and somehow developed unusually long arms, the experience can be a little awkward.

Maybe emotions are similar.

When sadness, anger, loneliness, or anxiety feels like something sitting beside us rather than something we are, it suddenly appears more vulnerable. And vulnerability makes compassion easier. Instead of shoving the feeling into a box, pretending we did not see it, or yelling, “Stop being a crybaby and get up,” perhaps we can respond to it a little differently.

Why is it so much easier to show kindness and love to things that are not ourselves? Why is it so hard to offer the same kindness to ourselves? I’m not here to solve that neuroscientific mystery.

So I’ll just say this: if it is so hard to be kind to ourselves, maybe we can simply make ourselves believe the feeling is someone, or something, else.

Sadness is on me. Anger is on me. Happiness is on me. Joy is on me. What a convenient little transformation tool language gives us.

written by SAKURACO