There is a self-inflicted kind of sadness that comes through wanting something we are not supposed to have. It's ultimately a desire for some kind of control, some way to keep things from going a certain way, from losing what we love.
Obviously love is a good thing. Loving and being passionate for things can be a good thing. But when we begin to fear losing those things (including power) we have started down a dark descent. We have made that thing (or keeping it) a god.
When we become the dictators of what must stay and what must go, we have entered a sure sort of sadness that almost inevitably leads to despair. When we hold things loosely, when we entrust them to the universe we get them back.
When we insist on having them and insist on having them a particular way we enter a very dangerous territory. Hold things loosely. Have only one obsession. That is ultimately the point. Have only one ultimate, above all and through all. Those who do not believe in God (who is by very definition that ultimate thing) will inevitably fill that void with something. Something has to be our ultimate. We need to have and understand our purpose however much we may think we don't.
This is where some can get sort of sanctimonious about the courage to live with the truth. This is usually connected to their conviction that God is an idea humans make up because we need comfort and the harshness of the world is too great.
But seldom do we inspect in the rejection of such traditional ideas what the real alternative is. If not God then what? And here is where the conversation will turn to the courage to live in reality, no matter how bleak. Sounds sort of convincing.
Accepting reality is a good thing. But it's not the only thing. And exactly what reality (or who's) are we accepting? What they are forgetting is that ideas create reality. How we understand the world does in a very real way create a different kind of reality.
Either we believe reality is created by ideas, by words, or it is not really created at all. It just is. And everything is at best an amorphous blob.
If indeed it is created by words and ideas, then we are created by words and ideas and our reality is ultimately created by the words and ideas we give it.
one can argue that choosing to believe the idea that a loving God created and is saving the universe is weak, and inability to except hard, cold reality.
But one can easily retort that the choice to believe in such a God is courageous and in fact will create and re-create that hard, cold reality others think must exist.