While reading the October 2025 issue of Cosmic Light (宇宙光) magazine, one line from the editor-in-chief, Ms. Chang Lien-Ti (張蓮娣), really struck me:
Sadness takes us into the depths of life and lets us see truths we usually overlook; it is like a window suddenly flung open, making us face the fragility and limits of our own existence.
In other words, sadness is really the warning light on life’s “reset” button, reminding you that some things need a second look. Maybe a relationship feels a little off, and you need to stop and think about where your patterns of interaction went wrong. Maybe you’ve been working toward a goal for a long time and still can’t reach it, and it’s worth asking whether the goal is realistic. And if you’re grieving the loss of a life, that sadness is proof that the relationship existed. At the same time, it helps us recalibrate, weaving that relationship into the depths of who we are as we learn to live our everyday lives without them.
Sadly, our culture never taught us how to respond to this warning light, and it has even stigmatized sadness. Even though plenty of articles now tell us that sadness is a neutral emotion that just needs some time to pass, many people caught between generations or carrying family trauma are still gnawed at by shame when grief shows up. So when sadness surfaces, they ignore it, or crush it down as hard as they can, flattening it, and flattening themselves along with it.
I hope that the next time Sadness pops up, we can all say to ourselves: “It’s time. I’m going to face my life a little more honestly.” The thing to crush was never sadness; it’s the voice trying to make you feel ashamed. That voice wants you to stay vague and fuzzy about your own life, and it doesn’t truly have your best interests at heart.
Postscript
After I wrote “Someone Is Praying for You” last Sunday, some readers filled out the form (thank you for trusting me!), so I’d like to make it a long-term project. I’ve removed the deadline from the Google Form. If you read this post and would like me to pray for something, you can click here to fill it out. If you’d like an email reply, I’ll write back within a week of your submission. Everything you share will be kept confidential and will never appear in any of my blog posts.
NB: This article was first published in Chinese. It was later translated with assistance from AI tools, edited by me, and published in English.