You're listening to Ted Talks Daily, I'm Elise Hugh.

Today, a conversation about how longing is a guide, how it can lead us to our better

nature.

Author Susan Cain sits down with Ted's current affairs curator, Whitney Pennington Rodgers,

at a Ted membership event to make a case for turning toward our sadness and longing in

a way that's instructive and healing.

The author takes some questions from the audience.

Support for Ted Talks Daily comes from Airbnb.

When you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me, wondering, could my place be an

Airbnb and if it could, what could it earn?

I think about this all the time.

Sub, whose extra room in London was storing furniture until his mom had the idea to start

Airbnbing it, now that extra room helps pay the mortgage.

And what your place could be earning at Airbnb.co.uk slash host.

The idea of bitter sweetness is that we live in a constant state, all humans do.

It's a constant state of a kind of existence simultaneously of joy and sorrow, dark and

light, bitter and sweet.

And then what comes with that is a heightened awareness of impermanence in all things.

And also a kind of curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world.

Because there's something about having this deep awareness that the joy comes with

sorrow, the sorrow comes with joy that makes us really a tune to the insane beauty all

around us.

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