What do most people do when they’re sad? They cry. But do you know what’s even sadder than that? It’s when you cry alone.

I’ve come to realize that being away from a lot of people you care about makes you a lot less surrounded by people who care for you. That’s the irony of it; you really would have a hard time finding someone to lean on especially when no one is leaning on you as well. Well, that really is a sad story, and it really isn’t uncommon.

There is a good side to all this though. You don’t have to carry the burden of other people’s lives. And at the same time, you don’t have to trouble anyone else to carry yours as well. Although, I’ve heard of this thing called equal sharing but honestly, this doesn’t really happen, in my real life at least. One would always be ahead of the other, one would always give more and take less, one would always be better, and one would always win. What about the other? Well, I’ve also heard of this saying, “That’s life, live with it.”

No matter how you look at it, there would be no happiness without the experience of sadness. So in the Theory of Equal Exchange (goes hand in hand with The Universal Cancellation Theory) that Paelo, a friend of mine has developed (and thanks to Carlo for blogging about it), I think this would also apply. Happiness is always at the expense of someone else’s sadness, at least if not at your own expense. Well, I guess, expense is too strong a word, when what I really mean is the experience of happiness is found as an expression of opposition to the experience of sadness, whether yours or that of others.

Therefore, as my consolation, I’d like to think that whenever I feel gloomy, it’s good to know that somehow, somewhere in the vastness of our existence, there exists someone who feels the exact opposite to what I’m feeling. It’s either that or sooner or later, I’d feel the exact opposite of what I felt.

But then again, I could keep on discussing this for as long as I could; but what I really just want to say is this. It’s really hard to say, “Goodbye,” when you barely said, “Hello.” And that’s what’s keeping me in pain. I could not say, “Goodbye Mama,” simply because I never said, “Hello Mama, I love you!”