Sadness

I googled sadness to see what the technical definition of the word is.  Of course, Google goes into too many derivations of the word and its meanings to be really helpful.  I was wondering if sadness is considered an acute complication or if it can be a chronic condition.

I gleaned from all the information on Google that sadness is really more of a temporary and situational condition.  If these emotions go further than this it seems that is more indicative of depression than simple sadness.

I did some reading on sadness today and wow what a wealth of information there is on sadness.  I truly believe there are a lot of sad people in this world.  That, in and of itself, is very sad and indicative of our times.

Following is one of the best pieces I found on sadness.  It bears reading a couple of times to really get the full measure if its depth.

“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.” 
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

The real question isn't what is sadness, because I believe sadness to be the anomaly rather than the norm.  So, given that everyone at some point in time is prone to bouts of sadness, how do we transform ourselves from a state of sadness into a state of happiness and well being?

Apparently that will require more research because I definitely don't have the answer as of this writing.

Night All!!!!