«Dad, what do I do about sadness?»

I couldn't tell from her face whether it was clinical depression, early heartbreak or simply that bottomless sadness that attacks us humans at the strangest moments like a vicious dog. I swallowed. In addition to the shock that my child might be unwell, I gradually realised that, at the advanced age of 40, I still don't know what relieves sadness.
Many years ago, I asked the Austrian writer Friederike Mayröcker the same question. At the time, she was deeply immersed in mourning her deceased partner Paul Jandl and had written something like a personal memoir, an obituary for Jandl in «Und ich schüttelte einen Liebling». The book was her attempt to put the unspeakable into words and thus take away the horror. I sat opposite the old, stooped lady in a Viennese coffee house and asked her: "What alleviates grief?"
She thought about it for a long time and then said: «Walking. Walking very quickly and a lot. That's good when you're in a lot of pain. You can get over it that way.»
I understood straight away. Walking has also helped me in many a dark hour. Paradoxically, walking is where brooding ends and thinking begins. And if you walk really far, both come to an end.

You come across people who have drawn the worse cards.

By the way, it's particularly good in big cities, because no matter how many worries you carry around with you, it often only takes a few steps to bump into someone who has drawn even worse cards than you in the game of life.
At the same time, this is not advice for a ten-year-old. So I asked her: «What do you do when you're sad?»
She thought for a moment, then she said: "I cry. Then I go to you or to mum. And then I do something fun."
She looked at me and then looked at her watch: it was 2 pm, she had to go to the circus. So she jumped up, kissed me and ran out the door.
I looked out of the window after her and had her words in my head: allow yourself to feel; look for people who make you feel safe; do things that mean something to you. That was pretty good advice. Suddenly she turned round and waved at me. I waved back and thought to myself that she had needed much less time than me to solve one of life's great puzzles.

To the author:

Mikael Krogerus is an author and journalist. The Finn is the father of a daughter and a son, lives in Biel and writes regularly for the Swiss parents' magazine Fritz+Fränzi and other Swiss media.