Bittersweet

The Marriage of Opposites

Hello, Friend,

On Throwback Thursdays I share archived posts from the vast and eclectic content I have stored in folders on hard drives. This short essay from 2017 felt apt at this particular moment. The digital art is from a new series of Iconic Women, Billie Holiday’s voice is the epitome of ‘bittersweet’ to me.

Lady Day, Digital Illustration Margot Potter Copyright 2024

Bittersweet.

Bitter. Sweet.

Bittersweet is one of my favorite words.

Bittersweet can be an adjective, describing an emotional state of being.

1.

both bitter and sweet to the taste:

bittersweet chocolate.

2.
both pleasant and painful or regretful:

a bittersweet memory.

Bittersweet can be a noun, the state of being itself.

Bittersweet can be a vine, from the nightshade family.

3.

Also called woody nightshade. a climbing or trailing plant, Solanum dulcamara, of the nightshade family, having small, violet, star-shaped flowers with a protruding yellow center and scarlet berries.

4.

Also called climbing bittersweet. any climbing plant of the genus Celastrus, bearing orange capsules opening to expose red-coated seeds, especially C. scandens.

Bittersweet can be a fleeting sensation.

5.

pleasure mingled with pain or regret:

the bittersweet of parting.

(Dictionary.com)

It says so much, so simply.

This is good, yes? This is the stuff of life.

Pure joy is a rare commodity. Most joy has some element, somewhere, of sorrow. It could be the sorrow of what is missing, the sorrow of what is yet to be, the sorrow of wanting to share it with someone who is not present, or the sorrow of knowing that it cannot be sustained. 

Being in the moment is difficult because we carry so much into each moment. We carry the burden of what has passed and we carry the anticipation of what's to come. This makes being fully engaged and invested in what is happening in the present challenging. The moment is all that is real and moments pass before we can evaluate them. We assign meaning to them in retrospect. We alter them by examining them. (This is fascinating to me.) Moments are not good or bad, they just are. We view moments through clouded lenses.

As I get older, I find myself feeling bittersweet more often. I see the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years of moments mounting. I know that what lies behind me is greater than what lies before me. My moments are decreasing. This imbues them with a deeper resonance, but that's just my lens. The moments to come are no more or less important than the moments that have passed.

I think more often these days about the importance of not wasting moments, yet I waste them anyway. I waste them focused on what I don't have, what I have lost, and what I didn't say or do. I waste them waiting for invitation, illumination, or affirmation. This is frivolous. My life is a nanosecond in eternity. Most of what I find happy or sad or meaningful is meaningless in the face of infinity.

I know this. Yet, here I am, breathing in, breathing out. Feeling all the feelings. Stretching towards forever. Aching for meaning. Seeking the purity of the unfettered moment.

The joy and the sorrow. The pleasure and the pain. The bitter and the sweet.

In the Tao it is all the same.

Bittersweet. Life is not black and white, it is the myriad shades that fall in between. 

Yes, this. 

xoxo, Margot

A Note: I’m trying to find a balance here and I want to reiterate that you can opt to consume as much or as little as you need in terms of the content I provide. My current plan is five posts a week. Two videos, one new essay, one archived essay, and a simple image based post on Fridays. You can opt out of emails, but stay subscribed and find my posts here at the top of your feed. You can delete if you can’t find the bandwidth on any given day. You can follow and not subscribe. You can unsubscribe if you feel overwhelmed. Do what you need to do in this moment and know that I’ll be here if you need me.