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The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

The word sadness originally meant fullness," to be filled to the brim with some intensity of experience. It's not about despair, or distraction, or controlling how you're supposed to feel, it's about awareness. Setting the focus to infinity and taking it all in, joy and grief all at once; feeling the world as it is, the word as it could be. The unknown and the unknowable, closeness and distance and trust, and the passage of time. And all the others around you who are each going through the same thing.

The Romans called it lacrimae rerum, the "tears of things." We call them obscure sorrows.

"I read the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything."

—Steven Wright

Kairosclerosis

Justing

Idlewild

Chrysalism

Trumspringa

Licotic

Treachery Of The Common

Foreclearing

Zielschmerz

Harmonoia

Wildred

Funkenzwangsvorstellung

Funkenzwang-svorstellung

Symptomania

Mal De Coucou

Midding

Moledro

Immerensis

Appriesse

The Til

Wellium

Hobsmacked

Innity

The Whipgraft Delusion

Tirosy

Catoptric Tristesse

Anechosis

Scrough