So Damn Beautiful — Thoughts on Susan Cain’s Bittersweet

I would like to thank Daniel Goldin, the editor of this journal, for inviting me to write this essay. The notion of the bittersweet has been a longstanding interest of mine that I have written about previously, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to offer some further thoughts on the topic given the prompt of Susan Cain’s evocative book, which at its essence, is about all the beauty that loss and longing afford. In my initial discussion with Daniel about the prospect of writing this piece, I referred to a prior essay that I had written some years ago about a national Vietnam War protest that I attended as a child with my family in Washington, D.C. In my memory of that event as I noted in that piece, “It seemed like the whole country was there that day. The scene felt chaotic but safe. And warm.” Sitting atop my father’s shoulders, the anti-war poster that stood out to me most read, “War is not good for children and other living things.” Daniel then told me that he was at that protest as a child as well, and that he too had sat on his father’s shoulders while listening to the speeches. He said, “We might have seen each other.” So this essay is for all the children who sat on the shoulders of their parents in protest of war on that day long ago, connected now in some bittersweet way, through our longing for childhood and an ongoing plea for peace

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