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Sadness and Grief: The Hard Times

Knit Us More Closely Together

he very first day of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” the
Archbishop began, “when one of the witnesses came to tell us about
his experiences—it was at the end of a long and grueling day—and he
was trying to tell us how they had tortured him. Then there was a point in
trying to recall what they had done to him that he found it difficult to
speak. He had now developed a speech impediment. I don’t know what it
was, the recalling or the speech impediment, but the witness was not able
to go on. And he started a sentence and then put his hand up to his eyes
and started weeping. And I joined him.
“At the end of it I said to my colleagues, ‘I told you I am not fit to be
chairing this. And lo and behold, I was right. I’ve made a public spectacle
of myself.’ I’m a crybaby. I cry easily. . . . I suppose I love easily, too.
“And so I think we shouldn’t think we are superwomen and supermen.
To hold down emotions in a controlled environment, as it were, is not
wise. I would say go ahead and even maybe shout out your sadness and
pain. This can bring you back to normal. It’s locking them up and
pretending that they are not there that causes them to fester and become a
wound. I’ve not read this in a book. It’s just how I have handled them.”
Sadness is seemingly the most direct challenge to joy, but as the
Archbishop argued strongly, it often leads us most directly to empathy
and compassion and to recognizing our need for one another.
Sadness is a very powerful and enduring emotion. In one study it was
found that sadness lasted many times longer than more fleeting emotions
like fear and anger: While fear lasted on average thirty minutes, sadness
often lasted up to a hundred and twenty hours, or almost five days. While
the evolutionary value of our fight (anger) and flight (fear) responses are
clear, the value of sadness seems harder to understand.