Sadness was easy. Sadness was the low-hanging fruit. Anyone could write about it and the morbidity of life. We lost more than we won. That’s what made us human. We lived our lives afraid of losing ourselves.
All anyone ever wants is for someone to understand, and when a line or two meets their pain halfway, the writer is revered. Yet, the writer didn’t make an effort. They weren’t even trying. The sole reason someone shares their sadness is to get rid of it.
Talking about sadness was routine. It became boring after a while. It was hilariously easy, too. I could whip up a sweet poem or about thirty lines of crisp prose with an impactful last line about sadness right now. Hell, I could do that while I took a walk with you. Heartbreak was abundant in my life, and all lives were generously blessed with pain. It wasn’t difficult.
It was much, much harder to write about happiness because happiness didn’t come easy. It was hard to look at the sun through the curtain of clouds covering it. It was hard because you had to believe, and most artists were too proud of themselves to believe in anything.
To write about happiness, you had to push all the hurt aside and look at a flower and think about all the beautiful things it makes you feel. In fact, you had to make a deliberate effort to find the flower on most days. It was difficult to be happy, even more to write about it.
But writing about happiness wasn’t about the preachy dimwits writing desperate one-liners in the name of poetry. Those hacks were the saddest of all. The only proper way to write about happiness was to immerse oneself in the most intense sadness one could possibly feel. Then, choose to turn away.
Sadness was the low-hanging fruit; happiness was to resist the urge to pluck it. Yet, even the greatest of artists gave in to temptation on most days.
And I was, by no means, among the greats.