Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief (Proverbs 14:13).

Children are famous for their simplistic transcriptions of human emotions.  If you're laughing, you're happy.  If you're crying you're sad.  But the truth is that emotions can be a lot more complicated than that.  There are situations like tears of joy, upon being reuinited with a dear, old friend -- or breaking into a fit of laughter at a funeral.  And these situations cannot be so easily categorized by external criteria.

Kids learn these social patterns eventually.  But even into adulthood, we regularly fall into this shallow perception of happiness and sadness.  Maybe not so much misunderstanding the tears of a proud new father, but still jumping to convenient conclusions about emotions because, well, it can be difficult to consider the deeper things of joy and grief.  If we really stop and consider it, though, we realize that life is full of both pleasant things and painful things.  Happiness can never be a permanent thing, at least not on this side of eternity... But then again, it's also good to remember that sadness can never be a permanent thing either.

Proverbs 14:13 may be about the closest we can get to a biblical confirmation of the extra-biblical legend of a ring given to Solomon by one of his advisors.  Allegedly, Solomon had given the advisor an assignment to find him a ring that would fulfill two specific criteria:  "If a happy man looks at it, he becomes sad, and if a sad man looks at it, he becomes happy."  The task initially seemed like an impossible challenge; but after several months of searching, the advisor came back to Solomon with a gold ring that successfully fulfilled the two, seemingly-contradictory criteria, and pleased Solomon with its insight.  The ring was inscribed with this simple phrase:  "Gam zeh ya'avor." Translated:  “This, too, shall pass.”

We are wise to remember the ever-changing nature of our lives.  We go through seasons, through times of emotion that are mixed-up and mismatched.  But through it all, we can remember:  This, too, shall pass.