Living in a world where politics are so troubled, it would be odd if I did not write something about sadness. But, importantly, sadness is not a feature of the events themselves, rather it is how we, as individuals feel about them and my approach to such feelings has changed greatly over the years. 

While I was working, I rarely allowed myself to feel sad – after all it was not something that ‘real’ men did! There were exceptions; crying was uncontrollable when I learned that someone close to me was in peril. However, normally, when sadness arose I did a trick which allowed me to brush the feelings aside. I would simply bury myself deeper in my work and this almost always worked!

It is 17 years since I retired and I am now much more aware of sadness and when it arrives it touches me more than in the past. It is no longer a sentiment I try to suppress, and just as it presents itself in different ways it is also associated with different levels of hurt. This blog is about sadnesses that have recently troubled me.

First there has been the awful sadness generated from afar. For the last year or so, inhumanity in the Gaza Strip and in Ukraine has been relentless. It is a sadness that weighs heavily as I see almost daily the carnage of women, children and men, plus the destruction of homes and communities. I know that the images come from far away which makes the feelings slightly more bearable but it still brings a persistent and draining background sadness and one that I suspect is the same for everyone. 

Turning to a second sadness and one emanating from the USA. No one has died, no one has been maimed  –  I am talking about the sadness, mixed with anger I have felt recently each time I have seen videos of Donald Trump’s vicious hectoring at his election rallies and then when he was elected as the next President of the USA. The wretched implications of his victory for America, for us and for the planet have made me thoroughly miserable. It is a feeling likely to continue for the next five years and is unlikely to ease. 

Setting aside these awful examples of global misery, there have also been events that generated sadness more locally, one of which was predictable and so avoidable. For a treat we took our grandson to a Halloween extravaganza at Kew Gardens. As I see it, Halloween is the most unpleasant of ‘festivals’. It has been celebrated for centuries and whatever its origins and whatever form it takes it is always linked with death and dying in which frightening people is a key goal. Certainly, scaring visitors with ghoulish presentations was what the Kew organisers offered and so it was. As thousands of us walked through the trees, skeletons (see first illustration), actors dressed as ghosts, coffins and torture cages, were everywhere. Perhaps it is because I am at an age where dying is a reality but the umpteen macabre scenes disturbed me immensely and I hurried through feeling miserable and left as soon as I could. Moreover, the upset I felt lasted days!

Finally, a sadness that was very personal and even trivial. For years I drank my tea and coffee from a favourite cup with its bird decoration. Then, last week it fell from my hands and broke. In my sadness I immediately ordered a replacement, learned it would be sent in a few days and then tracked its delivery. Early on the given day I received an email saying it had just been delivered, left in an alcove by the front door. Excited, I rushed out but there was nothing. I immediately searched through neighbours’ alcoves – again nothing. A cloud of sadness descended and thinking that I might never get a replacement my upset worsened – not only had I broken my original cup but now the promised replacement had gone astray. 

More in hope than expectation, I went round to the neighbouring street and knocked on the house with the same number as ours. With a smile, a builder working there handed me a small parcel that had just been delivered – alcove be damned!

I opened the parcel as I walked home and then shouted out loud with glee when I saw my new cup and touched it. Even better was sipping from its ‘same’ rim, then hanging it up alongside its new colleagues in the kitchen (see second illustration) and, as if by magic, any trace of sadness vanished.

It is worth noting that while sadness is wretched, sometimes it can be remedied by the tiniest of ‘treats’. However difficult it is to bear, it might help to remember that sadness is, after all, only a state of mind!

The first illustration shows a photograph of a human skeleton which is part of the Kew Gardens Halloween extravaganza. This was taken during daytime when the organisers say the ‘scare factor’ is less.  The second illustration is a photo of my new ‘bird’ bone china cup that I ordered by post.  

For help with writing this blog, I would like to thank Sam, Rohan and Vivien.