I'm working on it.

It's amazing to me how something good can become something bad so quickly, how in a matter of minutes joy can turn to sadness. And while I think that sometimes the reverse is true, that sadness can turn into joy and do so quickly, it's my hypothesis that usually, the conversion of sorrow to anything less takes a lot of time.

It's also amazing to me how little we really know of one another, even in our closest moments. We think we get past that surface space of 'how are you? - oh, great, great! and how are you? how's the family? - doing well, doing well, thanks for asking', but we don't really. At least not that often. And the stuff that lies underneath that surface, that's the stuff that really needs knowing, needs to be known, and yet somehow can't bring itself to an experiential understanding of the concept.

I'm pondering these two ideas here on the couch ... hastening sadness and the superficial knowing. How deep our sadness can be and how very fast it comes, all the while, those around us never really knowing just how dark the days or nights are, or how we're struggling for footing. But it's more than just that. It's how the superficial knowing deepens the pain of our sadness, how that longing for someone to know and yet fearing with all we have that someone will know, how it makes the struggle seem unconquerable and hopeless, it's this that spins the 'little grey cells'.

I don't really have any special truths on the subjects, or any clever insight. And the only conclusions I've reached today are that time adds to the increase of sorrow, especially in sorrows un-addressed, that in as much as I want to know and be known, I fear more the being known than the knowing, and that once that low plateau of unbearable weight finds its way into the center of a life, the climb back up, whether it's a solo hike or a group journey, is hard to the measure of near impossible.

I know that joy comes in the morning. And yet it often feels like that morning is so far away. And I long for home.