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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

Kairosclerosis

n.
the moment you look around and realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart, and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.

Ancient Greek καιρός (kairos), a sublime or opportune moment + σκλήρωσις (sklḗrōsis), hardening. Pronounced “kahy-roh-skluh-roh-sis.”

Chrysalism

Justing

Mahpiohanzia

Exulansis

Plata Rasa

The Til

Foreclearing

Ghough

Harmonoia

Treachery Of The Common

Funkenzwangsvorstellung

Funkenzwang-svorstellung

Ringlorn

Ochisia

Falesia

Vicarous

Flashover

Foilsick

Hobsmacked

Elsewise

Mottleheaded

Boorance

Skidding

Offtides

Inerrata

Addleworth

Ghough

The Standard Blues