This is something I’ll probably regret publishing, but here goes.
My therapist gave me these words the other day: 「了然於心，不減悲傷。」 Apple translates the sentence to “It’s clear in the heart, and it doesn’t reduce sadness.”
For the first half of 2022 there’s really been some high-highs and low-lows for me. I can’t fully explain nor rationalize how they came about, nor why they affected me so much. Some part of me still feel at odds with my perceptions of whatever transpired and didn’t. It’s been strange.
In the therapy session we talked about some of my views on death, suicide, relationships, and 牽絆, and how they relate the living days that we all have to endure.
I learned that I seek to understand the logic behind things so I can process and accept them to be the laws of the universe, and auto-pilot through life with these principals. However, I started(?) to expect apathy to come after acceptance, and it never did.
Acceptance works like acknowledging a bug. The bug doesn’t go away. If we know how to fix it, great. If we don’t, we find a workaround. If there is no workaround, we learn to live with it. But knowing how to live with it does not mean it would stop affecting us on a daily basis.
So we accept that the sadness is here to stay.