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A Single Horizontal Stroke Between Pain and Happiness

The characters for “pain” (辛) and “happiness” (幸) differ by only a single horizontal stroke.

That one line separates suffering from joy.

This poem reflects quietly on how closely happiness and hardship stand back to back in human life, entrusting its meditation to the subtle beauty of written characters.

Is that single stroke an accident, a matter of attitude, or something shaped through relationships with others?

Added or subtracted, shifting with circumstance—

the poem asks how we are to handle that one fragile line, and what resolve it demands of us.

 

A Single Horizontal Stroke Between Pain and Happiness

 

To lament life—

pain cuts deep.

Sorrow runs deeper still.

Terror makes us tremble.

What we detest grows many.

A single horizontal stroke

turns happiness into pain.

In an instant, everything reverses.

The present does not know itself as “now.”

 

Is life a tale of upheaval?

What is ordinary is overturned.

Calm is shaken.

Fairness is broken.

Peace is threatened.

The feeling of happiness carries within it

that single stroke of pain.

At some unforeseen change, it reverses—

today unaware of what tomorrow brings.

 

I wish to celebrate life.

Let hatred be denied,

and praise affirmed.

Let arrogance be denied,

and restraint affirmed.

Let envy be denied,

and freedom from resentment affirmed.

Let not that single stroke

turn happiness into pain.

Whatever may occur, let it not reverse us.

May we build happiness today and tomorrow.

 

I wish to be happy

with those who walk beside me in life.

How shall we draw that single stroke

in the pain of parting?

Can shared living in pursuit of happiness

overcome suffering?

Can resonant empathy

stand against pain?

Is it the strength to hold suffering

that finally secures happiness?

 

Happiness and pain stand back to back.

Therefore we hide the sorrow of pain

deep within the heart.

Therefore we let the joy of happiness

resound at the core of our being.

 

Is human life nothing but

the arithmetic of adding and subtracting

that single horizontal stroke?

Whether today or tomorrow,

we are compelled

to taste it all to the full.

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