Seeking Peace

I was reading through some of my stories in the fiction section and realised that many of my melancholy or sad stories begin with the main character clutching a photoraph. The photograph usually has a happy memory etched onto paper and the character is sad for the loss of that precious piece of paradise. It is, I believe, in photographs that the real depth of forgotten happiness is relived.

I remember being miserably sick on family holidays, and yet when the photographs come in much later, they look spectacular. We look happy and goofy and all the good kinds of weird.

I suppose it is this thought that almost always resonates in my mind when I try to write sadness. It is only when the piercing purity of happiness is a visual reminder, that the bleak reality of pain and sadness is so much more profound. And it is the hope of that happiness one day returning that makes us march forward, seeking our ever elusive peace.