One Joy Scatters a Hundred Griefs

On Twitter the other day, someone had posted the following quote:
One Joy Scatters a Hundred Griefs–Chinese Proverb
Seeing this immediately began to cheer me up. I started to think, ‘What if that is really true?’

For many of us who have, or are currently going through dark times it is easy to begin to feel heavy. We can wonder, how am I going to become a cheerful person after what I have experienced? Perhaps we can use what has happened in the past skillfully in order to help move ourselves into a brighter present and future more easily.

What if we consider the losses or shocking moments in our lives so far and think, “My life is so different then I could have predicted so, maybe just about anything can be possible!” If this proverb is accurate, we only need to find one joyful moment or experience to lighten the weight of many sad ones. That seems within reach!

In general, grief tends to feel very solid and durable, and joy somehow more fleeting and vulnerable. In this quote though, the usage “scatters a hundred griefs” conjures a sense that joy is the stronger and more powerful force and that somehow grief is light enough to be lifted by the winds and separated.

What do you think? Do you feel that to balance life experiences each sorrow needs to be compensated by a separate happy event on a 1:1 ratio? Is it possible that we can learn to let the brighter moments become 100 times stronger than the dark ones?
(Thanks to @NHRdee for sharing this proverb on Twitter.)