Have you ever made a mistake and then felt that sharp sting in your chest — that sinking feeling that something inside you just… broke?

Or maybe you didn’t make a big mistake, but a slow sadness came upon you, like clouds gathering over the heart. It doesn’t always announce itself with drama — sometimes it’s just a quiet heaviness, a sense that you’re not where you thought you’d be. That you’ve fallen short — somehow.

In moments like this, our first instinct is usually to resist. To escape, blame, distract, or scold ourselves.

But this is where the wisdom of the Upanishads comes in — gently, like a hand on your shoulder in the dark. They don’t tell us to run from sadness. They invite us to stop.

To listen.

To turn inward, and look — not at the world, but at the one who is feeling all this.

The ancient rishis understood that sadness isn’t a flaw in the human experience. It’s a doorway.

They called it tapasya — the inner fire that refines us, that burns away the false so that the true may emerge.

And when we make mistakes — when we falter — that fire becomes very real. But instead of being consumed by it, we are asked to witness it.