On Bittersweetness as a Call to Action
The seed of bittersweetness to me is the distance and tension between the better world that is possible and the actuality that your mind and your senses understand to be real. It’s actually quite lovely, though. Music pings this sense of bittersweetness; memories of lost loved ones underscores it; autumn, just beginning around here, especially brings it alive for me, which may be why it’s on my mind.
Bittersweetness is a longing, it is a gentle sorrow, it is poignant, it is an abiding sense of the ephemerality of something that is beautiful to me. It is many things but how bittersweetness unfolds within me is something that makes me press my hands against my chest involuntarily, as if I were trying to hold my heart in place. It’s sad and lovely and something I need regular inner-stirrings of to feel whole.
Indulging my appetite for bittersweetness regularly, I think, is part of why joy and laughter are accessible to me as well. You can’t cordon off and isolate your layers without draining the whole juiciness of you. The circuitry of emotions are too interconnected and buttressing of one another for segmenting like that; without the sweet and enriching good feelings, there would be no sadness with loss, but there would also not be the love we have for what we savor. And without making room for even just a hint of sadness, even without conscious awareness, amplifies what we love and cherish.
I also think that the presence of a bittersweet response within us also provides a very strong clue of what we feel called to fight for in our lives and in this world. You hear music that moves you to tears? Maybe you need more avenues for self-expression. You read a story that haunts you? What was it that burrowed into you? You’d best believe that when I feel the familiar pang of bittersweetness, I often use it like a metal detector. What is it that is signaling there and how do I unearth it?
As a child, I think it was my love for my grandmother that first pushed on my internal bittersweetness. Realizing when I was four or five that my grandmother wouldn’t live forever made me appreciate and bask in her presence more. She was vibrant, strong and deeply present but she was, ultimately, fleeting, this person I loved more than it seemed possible within just one human body. Same with my grandfather. Knowing that they were twice my parents’ age just seemed so unfair. I needed to squeeze every ounce out of our time together; we laughed, we played cards, we baked together; we took walks to the dime store and the beach; we had great talks but the fact that they would not be here for my whole lifespan intensified my time with them, put a fine point on it. It made the soft skin of my grandmother’s strong arms around me and the way my grandfather looked at me with so much love all the more ephemeral and precious.
I couldn’t have them forever but while I did, I would cherish them. There was always an undercurrent of sorrow to our time together, even when I was my most happy and content. Maybe that is just how I am wired.
The seeds of bittersweetness are also part of what made my activism take root; the distance between what is possible and the reality I observed. Seeing the freedom and pure enjoyment of the beings once designated as fodder for our food system finding peace and protection at sanctuaries is bittersweet when you know they are a infinitesimal few compared to the ones still suffering without a chance of rescue; listening to birds singing their beautiful songs as climate disasters accelerate and unfold is bittersweet. It is beauty and it is sadness woven together.
What I want to say is that maybe if you’re feeling that bittersweet pang of longing, it is a clue and a call for your action.
Feeling sad is okay; feeling hopeless is normal. We just need to move through it to get to our call to action and feel whole. If it’s bittersweet to notice the tension between what is possible and what is observable reality, that is where I need to work. There is no place within me for swallowing and numbing my honest response to cruelty, violence and indifference. I believe that bittersweetness is not just letting your spirit long for something better. It is a call to action. Our inner-guidance system knows that a better world is possible, that we shouldn’t just land on feeling sad or angry and stay there. Stagnancy is what depresses us. Take a breath, yes, but it is up to us to do this work. We have to notice what we love and we have to fight for it, nurture it, protect it, feed it, and build it.
Marla Rose is cofounder of VeganStreet.com.
