Joy is Sorrow Unmasked

Once in awhile I'll open Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet and read the page I opened to.  This morning I read this:

Then a woman said, Speak to us of joy and sorrow.  And he answered: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.  And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. . . The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

I have had enough experience with both to agree that what Gibran says here is true.  a less beautiful way of putting it would be every cloud has a silver lining.  That saying always sounded cliché and I believed people said it just to shut you up about how bad you thought life was going. But it is true. Every time bad things happen, equally good things happen later, if you make it through the bad that is.