Ten Key Ideas

1. Follow your longing where it’s telling you to go.
2. Transform your pain into beauty, your longing into belonging.
3. The art we love best, the music we love most, express our yearning for a perfect and beautiful world.
4. Upbeat tunes make us dance around our kitchen and invite friends for dinner. But sad music makes us want to touch the sky.
5. Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering.
6. Creativity has the power to look pain in the eye and turn it into something else.
7. Our oldest problem is the pain of separation, our deepest dream is the desire for reunion.
8. We all experience spiritual longing, whether we’re atheists, believers in the deities of the ancient books, or something else, or somewhere in between.
9. We transcend grief only when we realize how connected we are with all the other humans who struggle to transcend theirs.
10. We’re just humans: flawed and beautiful and longing for love.

Excerpt From
Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole
Susan Cain

Image: Myriams-Fotos