Book of the Month - June
Bittersweet
Susan Cain - ISBN: 978-0-451-49978-3 - 2022
Author:
SUSAN CAIN is the #1 bestselling author of Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, which spent eight years on The New York Times best seller list, and has been translated into 40 languages. Susan’s TED talks have been viewed over 40 million times. LinkedIn named her the Top 6th Influencer in the World, just behind Richard Branson and Melinda French Gates. Susan partners with Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant and Dan Pink to curate the Next Big Idea Book Club. They donate all their proceeds to children’s literacy programs. Visit Susan at susancain.net.
Brief Synopsis:
Bittersweet explores the concepts of longing and sorrow. At one time, these attributes found in humans the ability to be treasured. Humans used them to power exploration, creativity, and insight. Susan decides to travel the road less taken and explore bittersweetness as a opportunity instead of a disease to be treated. From Leonard Cohen to the cellist of Sarajevo, from music to movies, from books to the sacred transcendence of literature, Susan journeys deep to find why everyone, at different levels, has this longing they need filled and can it make us whole.
Insights:
“This book is about the melancholic direction, which I call the “bittersweet”: 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. The bittersweet is also about the recognition that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. “Days of honey, days of onion,” as an Arabic proverb puts it.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole - pg. xxiii
“I’ve concluded that bittersweetness is not, as we tend to think, just a momentary feeling or event. It’s also a quiet force, a way of being, a storied tradition—as dramatically overlooked as it is brimming with human potential. It’s an authentic and elevating response to the problem of being alive in a deeply flawed yet stubbornly beautiful world. Most of all, bittersweetness shows us how to respond to pain: by acknowledging it, and attempting to turn it into art, the way the musicians do, or healing, innovation, or anything else that nourishes the soul. If we don’t transform our sorrows and longings, we can end up inflicting them on others via abuse, domination, and neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward each other.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole
“But I believe that the grand unifying theory that explains the paradox of tragedy is (like most such theories) deceptively simple: We don’t actually welcome tragedy per se. What we like are sad and beautiful things—the bitter together with the sweet. We don’t thrill to lists of sad words, for example, or slide shows of sad faces (researchers have actually tested this). What we love is elegiac poetry, seaside cities shrouded in fog, spires reaching through the clouds. In other words: We like art forms that express our longing for union, and for a more perfect and beautiful world. When we feel strangely thrilled by the sorrow of “Moonlight Sonata,” it’s the yearning for love that we’re experiencing—fragile, fleeting, evanescent, precious, transcendent love. The idea of longing as a sacred and generative force seems very odd in our culture of normative sunshine. But it’s traveled the world for centuries, under many different names, taking many different forms.” ― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, pg 36
Should I read it or skip it?
I found Susan an episode of the Carey Nieuwhof podcast. I was going to take a cruise, and I decided this would be my cruise book. One of my biggest reasons for engaging with the material stems from Susan’s outlook as an agnostic. She is well-versed in many religions but doesn’t believe in any of the options. She finds a way to experience the sacred without experiencing Christ. She acknowledges the longing C.S. Lewis calls the God-shaped hole in our heart but misses the God who wants to fill it. She does an excellent job of redeeming the melancholy personality. In a society built on positivity and the over-the-top salesperson, those of us who possess a bittersweet bent often get relegated to the depressed and lonely. The truth lies in the ability to examine your life and then move forward.
I appreciated this take as I am a melancholy choleric personality. This book was also a more challenging read for me than other books. I tried both hard copy and listening. Be prepared to take on a challenge when you take up this book. Susan’s prose explains things, but she spends a lot of time chasing rabbit trails. Her writing reminds me of a pastor who wants to put all his research into his entire sermon, which is appropriate for a book but hard on the reader.
