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The Sweetness

Ze Frank | August 2, 2025



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Written by Ze Frank

Comments

This post currently has 46 comments.

  4. @cccchip04

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    Depression can be an addiction. It's easier to stay down here than choosing to try again. I love the saying you don't try to be happy you wake up and choose to be happy, but here I am again
    Well, I'll try to choose again tomorrow.

  7. @SapkaliAkif

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    Back here again. Everytime I come back, it makes me think about where I perceive sweetness to be. It makes me think about the things that make me crave the sweetness. Sometimes the craving is justified, even more so now.

    Welp. I hope when I come back to this video again, I will have gotten out of the groundhog's years. I hope I am dealing better with regrets. I hope I have unmasked more and creating something genuine that I am proud of.

  10. @aazhie

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    I always was fascinated by the Jimmy Eat World line: the sweetness will not be concerned with me. And this video resonates with that lyric, to me. It's like we are searching for the Platonic Form of love, rather than real love. And we have to accept that the Sweetness will not be there for us.

  11. @bbmpiano

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    To anyone still drowning in the sweetness, there is no solution. Letting go is such a tragic and sad thing but you can only choose between anxiety and depression, to live or die. To drown in the sweetness, paralysed, unable to move or stare straight into the dark night and press on with no warmth to shower you. Either path is painful, but at least with the one of letting go of the sweetness, you get killed by life, not by yourself.

    The sweetness is a drug. Its chronic suicide. You have to kill yourself off partially in order to avoid death, anxiety, facing life head on. And i suppose this is where the sadness originates from: we are dying by the minute and there is nothing to stop it.

    Pressing on into the unknown, with no assurances, into a chaotic reality where you will lose yourself in the hastiness of life. That is living. Living is not a sunshine and rainbows picture, it is cruel, you are forced into progressive separation and individuation and the loneliness envelops you as you grow older, your choices dwindling one by one.

    But I must press on. Miles to go before I sleep. It is extremely depressing for me to expect nothing but darkness ahead, all alone, but I have no other path, I have no other choice. And thus, I am no longer myself, I let go of myself and the perfect ideals and picturesque perfect moments of sweetness that I conjured up in order to place the best parts of myself into, like a safe box for future times when I finally arrived at the other side of the greener grass. But I know tomorrow will never come, the sweet sunset picture that I have vicariously lived in countless times of my head has no room for the present me in reality. I am separated. Separation is painful, it is lonely.

    I am in pain. Like a drug addict off his drugs and experiencing withdrawal. The world, oh god, it's so blunted in grey. You expect me to place the best of myself in this unaccomodating world who doesn't care about me? Because if it did, I woul dhave seemingly enjoyed all those authentic sweetness the other people did, but I was singled out to be tortured, to be shown a glimpse of false hope and played at by my heartstrings. So I shut myself off. I reject everything, I don't participate in every day life anymore. I sleep in my room, trash piling up, curtains closed. Oh god, what is this pain. I know I am the one killing myself and choking my vitality every second of the day. But I can't get up. I DONT WANT TO LIVE IN THIS WORLD WHICH I HAVENT CHOSEN. That's why the sweetness is so objectively insidious. No matter what else you're given in life, it's always that one thing you're lacking, no matter how fundamental and natural it may come by to other people. You can have the 99.9999% of the things in the world but that 0.0001% will irk you, because you didn't ask for the former. Here's the paradox: how do you know you want the latter?

    We will always want what we dont have, and the stronger it is denied us, the stronger our desire. Until we spiral down into such a narrow scope of focus, we neglect all other aspects of life. for we have placed our greatest energies in that one thing, the others seem blunted in grey.

    I am done tortured by warmth and love. I want pain, please, life, give me darkness, let me cry in the night where nothing is coming to save me. At least I can start to awaken my own powers and start saving myself. These sweetness, they take away my proactivity and responsibility to love myself. No more. I amd defined and want nothing. Maybe this is desensitisation, but the melancholic numbing pain is unbearable, so much so I would take a sharp blunt pain any day over it.

    In neuroscience, the parts of the brain that is activated by pleasure is also responsible for the sensation of pain. Ironically, if I really wanted happiness I would dive straight into pain (painful reality with all its responsibilities) as an intermediary step. It makes me a bit sad to think that happiness, pure bliss cannot stand on it own, not without some kind of effort or pain.

    So maybe, sweetness, cannot exist without me realising it will always be separate, I will never obtain it. Is that the cruel kind of "pain" that the world has assigned to this particular case of sweetness? It's too good to be true, so the world determines I will never be related to it directly, only in a parasocial way.

    There is no solution to sweetness. I have come to bitterly conclude over the past ten years since I first watched this video. There is no solution in the sense that you can obtain the sweetness as you wanted, because that is somehow considered a cheat by reality, and the punishment is this weird sweet paralysing pain. There is, however, a "solution" to living. Which is to go through the pain, immerse yourself, become it, then at least you're moving, at least your're fighting back. At least the action will objectively take you some place elsewhere in life that in the current moment you cannot picture, because life cannot be read forwards.

    And so I let go of myself. The best parts of myself encased in the sweetness objects I designate. I am not myself. I live on in every day life. I become part of it. I am life. and life will grant my the gifts that I deserve but have let go of, when I least want it. Because I no longer want anything, but everything I get from life from here on, I am grateful. I am grateful to live to begin with. I become humbled and I lost the vitality I once had imagining those sweetnesses, I press on with a confidence and peace, and authetic connection with everything that is gifted to me as I walk forward.

    I found the sweetness.

  12. @bobbikoller9349

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched this. It says it all. But all so much better then I ever could say. Thank you ze frank. I hope this video and all your material never is removed or deleted from the internet. I miss watching all the old episodes of the show with ze frank. Even though the news is old, there was great bits of comedic joy. But these are my favorite, so real and personal on topics we all can or will at some point relate to. Never stop creating. This is my sweetness.

  13. @supernautistaken

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    I've begun resenting that feeling, even though it has been more real than any relationship or passion I have ever felt. I've looked at this video from time to time and thought how it made me feel connected to humanity, but also disconnected. Tonight, as miserable as it seems, it is making me think about how my most powerful emotions have been fantasies I've made for myself in the vacuum that is my lack of life. i've spent most of my life waiting for things to happen, in denial, or horror, that this is what's happening.

  16. @themaggattack

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    Mind blown. I'll have to watch this several times. "Heart buds." Wow.

    FOMO has never seemed so poetic.

    Ze Frank is so excellent at elliquently explaining things we all feel, but can't quite express. And he does it in such a REAL, yet ethereal way.

    I've only watched his true facts, which are great in their own right, but I'm so grateful to have finally discovered these musings on the human condition. These are basically true facts, too!

  17. @ScottyMLover01

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    I still come back to this video sometimes, and the line about trying to let go of the chase hits me harder every time I come back a little bit older. It reminds me of a lyric from Dodie's song "Before the Line": "and I am lying when I say
    / it's time to let her float away / no, I'm still clawing for the strings." Like every time I tell myself to let the sweetness go and pretend to start actually doing it, there's a little toddler version of me in the back of my mind crossing their arms and just waiting for the next time we get to go chase it. And I think you're right that it's unhealthy, that it's better to let go, maybe that there are sweeter things out there that I can't even see yet because I'm so lost on this hopeless chase, but I still find myself clawing for the strings.

  20. @ginaharden2111

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    I have a question. This video is from 2012. Was this re-generated by you or merely shown in my Feed since I'm a subscriber and/or watch so much work of yours]? I'm asking because I clicked a Link in your description and it wouldn't load. Regardless, I hope you and yours are having a fabulous autumn. Love your stuff and wished I'd found you years earlier. I am crazy about your level of humor {mine occasionally may not be as funny to some ppl and may get me on someone's Shart List. Whoops! (End Stamp)

  23. @sigmavitali333

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    Over time the sweetness has dissipated. However, it returns sometimes, somewhat blunted. Sometimes it returns violently when I’ve been hurt. Its returns have been few and far between in recent years.
    Sometimes I worry that I’ve given up on something precious because I don’t feel the sweetness as strongly anymore.
    I check myself to see if somethings missing, but nothing else is gone but the sweetness. I always wanted something stronger, and maybe nowadays, with all Ive been through,
    I don’t need the sweetness as much.

  27. @MrRandomSuperhero

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    Hey Robin, dit is voor nagedachtenis. Vreemd dat je 8 jaar geleden niets gezegd hebt, dit is veruit de video die het meest bittersweet emotie meebracht. Het minimum van inzicht in de retrospectief verschrikkelijk rare tienerjaren. Als een laag hars. Ik voel me oud in perspectief, jong voor de rest. Of toch niet oud. 26 is vreemd op die manier. Maar 4-5 achter op de wereld uiteindelijk. Dat past in de supposedtobes.

    Anyways, ik vindt je weer in een paar jaar. Ashley is een geweldige naam voor een dochter.

  35. @bluebottlebunnyfarm

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    That made me cry. When my father was sick with cancer cures. I found that sweetness in my heart and a patience that came with it . Now that my husband is suffering with the same thing. I struggle to find that sweetness and compassion.. I guess it’s easier to tale meanness from a sick old man who raised you from a baby than it is to take meanness from a sick old mad who once gave me babies Anyway I hope I can muster my inner sweetness

  37. @eyelessnevermore

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    I know that you wrote and said this many years ago, Ze Frank, but I am right where you were.

    As I lay in bed at night in the blanket of night – yearning for that sweetness – I wonder if that sweetness is a lie I have been telling myself for 43 years. I wake up and smother those thoughts with smiles (but they are still there underneath).

    Do you even read these comments anymore?

    If you do, thank you for being right where we need you.

  38. @kelly-charmainemarieflanag1098

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    Sounds like you watched my opioid dreams. Imagine a deep bathtub filled with perfectly hot water and when you climb in,hands holding the sides as you dip one tiny piece of your big toe in, knowing the bottom of feet are more sensitive than a hand. Putting your weight into your arms, just in case, you slowly dip your second foot in and sigh at the pleasure of warmth. But it's when you let your weight start to settle on the back of the tub and slide under the water that the true final pain relief comes like a wave, yet begins deep within my bones, rushing out when matured to spread the heat with pain slowly overwhelmed by this bath.
    Just as it seems that the cold would forever leave my body, the heat banks and I am overtaken by large ocean waves of ice cold ocean water. As I wonder about the tub, I awaken, I think. I don't remember waking up pretty much every morning. But it's the end of my dream regardless.

  40. @lulastarr

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    I am guessing that you have received many compliments on your ability to tap into the most real, yet unspoken emotions which we all share, but too often dismiss without realizing that the person seated across the room, having a great time , behaving with such ease… is feeling very much the same way you are…. I write and designating words to feeling or vice versa is my greatest quest. It is truly satisfying to do so in a way that is relevant and wholly encompassing of the subtleties that make that feeling yours, understood and recognized by anyone who wants to listen.
    So, forgive the long dribble, thank you for being so darn honest and vulnerable and willing to share such personal experiences. It is equally satisfying to recognize those experiences and deeply, privately felt emotions in someone else's words. You, my friend are beautifully in touch with the bitter sweet, the embarrassing, the high flying things most people can't say…

  46. @susanparker7660

    August 2, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    Your description of your yearning makes me think of the search for God, before you are aware that you need Him. A searching and longing for what you can barely name, other than to belong and be loved without the struggle. Hugging you from here, and wanting for you the belonging you want for yourself♡

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