On 'Joy and Sorrow'

“He who has not looked on Sorrow will never see Joy.”

Kahlil Gibran .

In my quiet moments I do wonder and asked myself how do we know what is joy? What is happiness?

What Kahlil said has depth, great depth indeed. Kahlil was a person, a poet, a philosopher, who was greatly challenged since young and I’d say throughout his life. He went through intense and immense challenges and therefore I would say he has some authority with the very subject on 'joy and sorrow'.

I find what he said is so true.

I would go as far as saying, a person is as deep as how much he has been challenged.

To me the varied challenges that we go through in our lives, elevates the mind in various ways. It makes you think about life deeper. It makes you stop in your tracks and wonder and think and philosophise and internalise! It makes you go out of yourself and back in and out, until you find your answers.

To me, if we never knew sorrow, we would not have the ability to recognize joy to its full potential. How much sorrow we have gone through in our lives will be how much joy we will be able to understand and thus appreciate, as there is the comparison, the actual experience. If we had only lived with joy, life would be numbing. Life would be described as shallow, empty, hollow, even. There’s even the danger, we would lose interest, as the 'spirit' is not fed with variations, not fed with changes, not fed with depth, to go the distance.

You see the ONE above knows best.

HE gives us the gift of challenges. HE gives only what HE knows we can shoulder. No more, no less.

The wise ones from amongst us will see challenges from HIM as gifts on earth. They would receive any challenge with affirmations of ‘Praise be to Allah’.

Long ago, I never understood that. I thought these wise people must be 'bonkers'. Why in heaven's name one would be thankful?

The first thing I'd do, when I do get challenged, I would make that long distance call between heaven and earth and I would argue and have a long dialogue with HIM as to, ‘Why me?’

Then as years passed by and many challenges later, I found out it was not only me. It was the whole 6 billion of us. Yes, I found out HE has the capacity to create 6 billion of us and managed to challenge the whole 6 billion of us in varied ways beyond our comprehension, and not as punishments, BUT as gifts.

Gifts of great joy at the end of it, through sorrow, only if we wanted to see it that way. Only if we accepted it that way.

That realization was humbling.

Only through the sorrow of knowing great pangs of hunger, makes a person appreciates food with joy, no matter how little.

Only through the sorrow of knowing great thirst, makes a person appreciates water with joy, no matter how little.

Only through the sorrow of losing health, and getting it back, makes a person appreciates his/her health, and lives life to the full with joy.

Only through the sorrow of losing the love of your life and meeting him/her again gives one extreme joy and makes one appreciates the ability to love and be loved, multifold.


It is true, ‘He who has not looked on sorrow will never see joy’.