The book is about the idea that all beings come into this world with a kind of ore like prime to feel a longing for a more perfect and beautiful world. We see the manifestations of this in so many different ways, from religious traditions to secular ones. In our culture, we are taught to think of longing as a kind of dangerous state that we might be wallowing in. But what all these traditions show us is that longing is actually the state that catapults us forward.
Susan Cain shot to fame in 2012 with her international bestseller Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, in which she urged society to cultivate space for the undervalued introverts among us. Now she's back with another book asking us to reassess how we think about self expression: Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. The book argues that by embracing the bittersweet at the heart of life – the sense that joy and sorrow are always paired – we can gain a heightened appreciation of the wonder and beauty of our own personal experience and throughout wider culture too. Our host for the discussion is writer, academic and broadcaster, Shahidha Bari.
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