I got this in a fortune cookie once:

"Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think."

And I absolutely believe that, and realize that we don't have to choose only one of those things. I saved it and put it in my photo album with a picture of my grandparents. They went through a lot in their youth (I won't even tell you save to say WWII, and many other oddities), and aging has not been kind to them. My grandmother is the most cheerful mid-to late-stage Alzheimers captive I have ever seen, and my grandfather, while going blind and at times lamenting the strangeness and tragedies of his history (he'll be 90 this year), also cracks jokes, and I love to hear him laugh. Life is an odd thing, to be sure.

Two of my heroes are Carl Sagan and George Carlin, people who were visionary and shared what they saw in the world in a way that made us think deeply about humanity and the universe. Carl Sagan shared his passion for the wondrous indifference of nature and the universe, the singular curiosity of our species existing in it at all. George Carlin showed us how to laugh at our foibles and our bitterness. It is all tragic and awesome, and our fragility and the ironies of our mere existence are what make it beautiful. The only ugly things in it are the hurtful things we do to each other and ourselves. It is only after we understand our place in all of this, realizing how small we are, that we find ourselves and become precious to each other. It's a matter of perspective.

I don't think there's anything wrong with all of this. Mental illness can rob us of that objectivity. What causes despair is the narrow-mindedness, the tunnel vision of depression that shuts out everything beautiful and forces us to focus on only the horrors of life. The beauty is always there, but it's sometimes very hard to make out through our own personal clouds, at times tangibly and bleakly opaque.

There is so much more to see. That is the truth.