Sadness.

In Everything is Illuminated, Brod counts 613 sadnesses. Some of them are startling. Sadness of looking in the mirror, Sadness of your parents knowing you are sad. I'm not sure I can think of 613. But there are new sadnesses I have discovered this year. I do not think sadness is a bad thing. I think it is important. It gives me another layer to add to my soul. It's part of a holistic human experience, I guess.

Genius is borne out of sadness, a lot of the time. I think I've been a little melancholy lately, but perhaps not sad. I don't seem to have time to be sad. But when I do, it can hit me like a tonne of bricks. I know a lot of people in my life who keep themselves crazily busy in a subconscious effort to ignore or avoid the things in life that make them cry. I'm not sure that it's wise to stick behind a veil all of the time. But then I guess, the last thing anyone wants is for their friends or family to see them sad. Other people's sadness is the hardest type to fix.

Sadness of:

• leaving
• arriving
• morning light
• ending
• dissatisfaction
• your loved one's sadness
• missing you
• history
• the future
• dents and missing shapes
• old photographs
• losing feeling
• comforting someone in despair
• realising you have grown
• love from too many people, too close and too far away
• detachment
• resignation
• dying fires
• remembering something long gone
• waiting
• acceptance

I feel there should be a summing up paragraph. But my feet are frozen.