Few insights for uprooting Sorrow

By Reza Ganjavi

Sorrow seems to be the common lot of mankind - common means it is everywhere and you can find it easily, and you can fall in it easily. I see this in myself and my friends. It seems as though we can always find reasons to be sad. Here are some insights that help me. Sorrow needs to be uprooted - otherwise it is like trimming the branches. Thought can create sorrow. Sorrow is rooted in time.

Thought is time. The future is the unknown. The present is the unknown unless it is corrupted by the past. Thought has its place and for the most part it does not belong in relationship - and if it enters relationship it can create havoc, as thinking is divisive: it needs to divide, break up an object to understand it. Sorrow can also be physical. Lack of certain vitamins and nutrients. The worst thing a sad person can do is to drink alcohol, as alcohol depresses the nervous system. Singing brings immediate joy, music is healing. Message is healing. Bodyworks/stretching/exercise makes the body high, and a happy, healthy body, makes a happy mind.

Now she asks, “What am I to do? I am sad, the man I loved is living with another woman.” Attachment is only human. You see it in airports, and in train stations - people crying - of sorrow, or of joy. I remember when I was 10 or so, my uncle with his American wife and kids and dog stayed with us in Tehran for a summer. I was so attached to them that when they left to the airport I was utterly devastated. I was crying hard, and all I could do was to pray that their airplane breaks down so they come back!

To deny attachment is an escape. But to understand oneself is the key to ending sorrow. I know if I am with a group, partying for a week, when I am alone again I feel empty. But soon it disappears and the disease of loneliness cures. "Soon" implies time, but time is really a very superficial factor in psychological change - it is only relevant in the physical aspect of psychosomatic change - maybe it takes my body time to find its own energy after being in contact with many others.