answer:I can try to give you an example from my life…Sometimes I am hit with tremendous sadness. But when I try to determine what is causing it or what is at the root of it, I’m left with just a vague existential explanation. Don’t get me wrong – I can come up with all kinds of things to be sad about, but I can’t be certain that those things are the cause of the sadness. Rather, it could be that the sadness becomes a lens through which I see things, and in that, many things identify as a cause. So, without an identified cause, what I find works best for me is to make sure I’m not trying to not feel this sadness. I become extremely curious about it – but not about its cause. I turn my attention to how it feels to be sad. I practice self-compassion (but definitely not self-pity), and identify how it colors my experience. I may try to look at it so closely, that it will get slippery and elude my focus. In those moments, I may see that it’s not really as powerful or constant as I had imagined initially. Rather, it comes and goes moment to moment. And when I accept that this is a just an emotion, and that it is temporary and interesting, I often find it just slip away. I obviously don’t request sadness, and I don’t campaign for its exit. Rather, I let it be and have space, and when it’s done it leaves as mysteriously as it appeared.