A sad person who is so involved with his sadness that he mistakes it for reality will have a hard time seeing himself as anything but sad. For him, the sadness is not a feeling that he experiences - it is him.
Interpretation
Sadness can become an identity for those who are deeply entrenched in it, making it difficult to see oneself beyond that feeling.
This quote by Mary Gaitskill delves into the nature of sadness as an emotion that can consume an individual so entirely that it transforms into a core part of their identity. When a person is overwhelmed by their sadness, it can cloud their perception of reality, leading them to believe they are defined by this feeling rather than merely experiencing it. This highlights the importance of recognizing emotions as transient, rather than static states of being.
In practice
A therapist might use this quote to help a client understand the distinction between sadness as a feeling and sadness as an identity.
What is faithfulness, anyway? Can you be unfaithful to your own feelings and faithful to someone else? Is it faithful to lie in bed night after night with someone you love but no longer desire while ardently dreaming of someone else?
Sometimes I write from the point of view of characters whom I would dislike as people, not as a perverse exercise, but because this cracks the story open and makes me see it in a way I would not see it naturally.
What are you thinking?” She asks. -That you are beautiful. That not everyone could see it. I almost became the kind of person who could not.
Genius abhors consensus because when consensus is reached, thinking stops. Stop nodding your head.
Accepting does not necessarily mean liking, enjoying, condoning. I can accept what is-and be determined to evolve from there. It is not acceptance but denial that leaves me stuck.
Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us.
The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination.
More knowledge may be gained of a man's real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.
Small people delight in what they call consistency-that is, it gives them immense pleasure to say that they believe now exactly as they did ten years ago. This simply amounts to a certificate that they have not grown-that they have not developed-and that they know just as little now as they ever did. The highest possible conception of consistency is to be true to the knowledge of today, without the slightest reference to what your opinion was years ago.
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