Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired.
If you’ve ever wondered why you like sad music . . .
If you find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day . . .
If you react intensely to music, art, nature, and beauty . . .
Then you probably identify with the bittersweet state of mind.
With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an untapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she employs the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and how embracing the bittersweetness at the heart of life is the true path to creativity, connection, and transcendence.
Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain, whether from a death or breakup, addiction or illness. If we don’t acknowledge our own heartache, she says, we can end up inflicting it on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward one another.
At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.
Susan Cain is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, and BITTERSWEET: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. She has spent the last twenty years exploring a particular realm of human nature: the quiet, the sensitive, the thoughtful, the bittersweet. It has always seemed clear to her – and to her millions of readers – that this way of being can lead to a richer, deeper form of happiness. Susan’s books have been translated into 40+ languages, and her record-smashing TED talks have been viewed over 50 million times and the QUIET LIFE online community at TheQuietLife.net.
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