Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain

Author:Susan Cain [Cain, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2022-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

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Toward the end of my time in Lisbon, Susan and I head together to another House of Beautiful Business activity: a tour of the city, focused on the life of its most famous (and infinitely bittersweet) poet, Fernando Pessoa. Poets are a very big deal here. The tourist shops stack poetry collections by the cash register the way in other capital cities you’d find maps and key chains. The main squares feature marble statues not of military heroes or heads of state, but of revered poets. And the most celebrated of all is Pessoa, who observed, not unlike Buddha and his mustard seed, that “there are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.”

I’m in the middle of writing this book, so it feels crucial that I take this tour. It’s one of the reasons I came to the conference.

Susan isn’t especially interested in Pessoa, but she’s agreed to come along. We’re to meet the group at a far-flung Lisbon address, but our GPS doesn’t work properly, and we’re chatting so intently that we’re distracted. By the time we arrive, we’re half an hour late and the tour has left without us. In the meantime, it’s started to rain, hard, and neither of us has an umbrella. But it’s warm outside and the organizers hand us a map showing the route. You’ll catch up in no time, they say. Just look for the group of orange umbrellas! You can duck under one of those.

Susan and I traipse through the storm, down this alleyway and across that boulevard, but the promised coterie of umbrellas doesn’t materialize. We stop to study the map, but the rain instantly reduces it to a pulp. Susan bursts out laughing, and a split second later I see the hilarity, too, and soon we’re doubled over on a soaking street corner. We decide to take shelter at the famed café A Brasileira, where Portugal’s iconic poets gathered almost a century ago. High ceilings covered with oil paintings. A marble bar. Black-and-white-tiled floors. And just outside the door, a statue of Pessoa himself, sitting at a café table in bowler hat and bowtie. Passersby line up to have their picture taken with him, even in the pouring rain.

We drink steaming cocoa under an outdoor umbrella near the statue. I’m still craning my neck, hoping for the miraculous appearance of the missing tour group. If only we’d left earlier for the tour, I’m thinking; if only we hadn’t got lost, and even (I confess) if only I’d gone on my own without the insanely agreeable company of Susan David to distract me, then I would have gotten to take the tour. I’m thinking, I flew all the way to Lisbon and I’m missing one of the experiences I came for. And it takes me almost to the end of the afternoon—once it’s almost over, in fact—to realize that I may have missed Pessoa, but during this afternoon of deep conversation, Susan and I have crossed the threshold into “friends for life.

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