Fortune for the Day – “Spread love everywhere you go.” – Mother Teresa
I am writing this in the wee hours of the morning before I head to the airport for my weekend trip with my college friends. On my calendar, in today’s space, I had written, “Write my blog about Brazilian “saudade” (sounds something like sow-da-ji).” Now I’ve mentioned on this blog before, how my calendar is marked all over with my incredibly sloppy handwriting , and questionable abbreviations, so once again, despite my vows to do better, I was left with the question, “Huh?”
I’m not sure where or when I heard of the word “saudade”, but in doing my research this morning, it turns out that saudade is a word that describes a feeling – a feeling so intense, that the country of Brazil has made January 30th, a day to officially celebrate saudade. This is how Wikipedia describes saudade:
Saudade is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return.[3] One English translation of the word is missingness, although it might not convey the feeling of deep emotion attached to the word “saudade”. Stronger forms of saudade might be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing, moved away, separated, or died.
Saudade was once described as “the love that remains” after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone (e.g., one’s children, parents, sibling, grandparents, friends, pets) or something (e.g., places, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past) that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings together: sadness for missing and happiness for experiencing the past.
It’s not lost on me, that on this official day of Saudade, I am embarking on a reunion with women who are dear to me. I am meeting up with women who I met when I was 18 years old, over 30 years ago. Back then, we were all just on the cusps of our first half of adulting. We had just passed over the thresholds of our childhoods, into the earliest stages of becoming adults. We met on a bucholic, beautiful college campus, having no idea of what our lives, shared and individually, had in store for us. We were fresh-faced, eager, confident, excited and scared, all at the same time. A lot of life has happened in those 30 years – marriages, divorces, births and deaths, curvy career paths, and a few extra wrinkles and pounds. Other than a few hard-wired personality traits and habits, we aren’t anything like those 18-year-olds who connected with each other, so long ago. Will we feel saudade for those very young versions of ourselves, this weekend? Will we feel saudade for those young ladies who entered college without the internet or cell phones to distract us? Will we feel saudade for all of the possibilities that had lain before us, those many, many years ago when we first met each other? Of course, most likely we will feel saudade. As we approach 50, more of our lives are likely behind us than in front of us anymore, and that’s okay. We’ve helped each other share in the beautiful fruits of life, and we’ve helped each other bear the scars which some of the thorns of life have made. When we look at each other, we still see that fresh-faced, eager, confident, excited yet scared, young lady behind the eyes of our friends, and we know that we have a lot more memories to make and to share with each other in the years to come. All of that equals more added saudade for our precious Bubble, but only in the best definition of the word.