For the past few months, I've slowly read Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain. I consumed many books this year, but this is one of my favorites so far (maybe because I read it slowly, bit by bit only when I have time).
Susan Cain wrote Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking about 10 years ago and it started the Quiet Revolution. It made me feel seen and explained, she became our spokesperson in the world where we feel comfortable not explaining ourselves for our differences. I've waited for that moment for so long throughout my childhood, teenage, and early adulthood, when we were expected to be 'socially active'. Well, that's a whole other story.
Last year she published Bittersweet and I decided to buy her paperback once it came out. Again, she did it, she wrote the things that I felt since I was 9 and when I started to see the world melancholically. I knew I couldn't be the only one who felt like this, I knew bittersweetness is not a momentary feeling for me, it's a temperament, it is a way of being, it is who I am and how I see the world.
This book is part memoir, part self-help, part anecdotal, part philosophical, and part research in understanding herself and the world around her. It is entertaining enough to be read not as an academic reading which I appreciate. It is relatable enough not to be accepted as reading a self-help book. It felt more like reading a self-journey in understanding longing and bittersweetness in life.
I think this book is suitable for people who see the world with so much intensity, with so much pain and longing and bearable sadness that follows them throughout their lives. We are not depressed per se, just a bit too melancholic, emotional, and nostalgic. We find the world too beautiful in its imperfection.
We are the artists, the poets, and the writers of the world. I feel like we were born with this much intensity so that we could express it beautifully in our own ways.
This book is not for everybody, I believe we can only get the connection we need with the book that we are reading when it is read at the right moment in our life. Some books are just not it at that moment, and some books resonate with your life well only at that particular time. So if you are primarily a bit sensitive, melancholic, and bitter, you can read it anytime. But if you are mostly positive, pursuing life like a tornado, driven, maybe it is not for you. Also, if you are in a phase of dealing with grief and sadness, it might be a good read for you too.
There are mixed reviews on Goodreads, some people felt that it is a bit too anecdotal and too personal to be taken seriously - then I personally believe that they aren't born as melancholic as some of us are, they don't understand the never-ending search, the longing, the emptiness that we are often thinking about, the hole that can't be filled.
Have you read Rumi, can you feel his pain and longing? Have you listened to The Album Leaf's The Light and not felt anything? Try to watch Tony Takitani and tell me what you feel?
“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.” - Rumi
"It's strange. I felt less lonely when I didn't know you." - Jean-Paul Satre
"Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - Like so very much to learn." - Sylvia Plath
I see it not only in literature but in music, movies, arts, lyrics, and anything man-made, and then I see it in my surroundings, my existence, nature, people, the world, and everything God created. Big and small, visible and not visible. Everything is art and it is painfully beautiful, the perfect imperfection.
So, every time I found someone as intense as me, I knew I was not the only one and it's just good to know (intense in this context is the inner self, the part that is not seen from the outside, I'm mostly seen as plain and rigid by my peers)
-
Note: The only thing that I don't feel comfortable with in this book is how almost everyone she mentioned (that she connected with for the research of this book), is mostly Jewish. Is this intentional, yes, maybe because she is Jewish and it was her personal research, but I wish she made it more versatile and inclusive? Other than that, the book is a 5-star.
Post Comment
Post a Comment