This season may not be cheery and bright for all

New York's Times Union publishes "The wisdom of sadness" by Meg Nigro Helligrass. She shares an excerpt from Thomas Moore's book Dark Nights of the Soul (2004) for people who are sad during the holiday season: "This book touched me deeply and offers a different but very insightful perspective on sadness and it’s potential to help us transform. " She writes, "Almost any health challenge or period of sadness is an opportunity to evolve as a human being if only you are willing to walk through the door your challenge provides and find out why it has appeared."

The passage from Moore's introduction includes:

"A true dark night of the soul is not a surface challenge but a development that takes you away from the joy of your ordinary life. An external event or an internal mood strikes you at the core of your existence. This is not just a feeling but a rupture in your very being, and it may take a long while to get through to the other end of it.
. . .
I want to explore positive contributions of your dark nights, painful though they may be. I don’t want to romanticize them or deny their dangers. I don’t even want to suggest that you can always get through them. But I do see them as opportunities to be transformed from within, in ways you could never imagine. You don’t choose a dark night for yourself. It is given to you. Your job is to get close to it and sift it for its gold.”