Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain't

The words of Josh Billings, “Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain’t got,” resound with both wit and observation, capturing the different ways in which sorrow clings to the hearts of humankind. He draws a sharp line between the grief of men, who look backward with longing to what was once theirs, and the grief of women, who look forward with yearning to what has been denied them. In this contrast lies a portrait of human desire: one laments the past, the other hungers for the future.

The origin of such a statement rests in the customs of Billings’ age, when men were more often given the freedom to pursue wealth, status, and glory. For them, sorrow was born when fortune slipped away, when loss robbed them of what they once held in their hands. For women, barred from many of the paths of power, education, and independence, grief often took the form of longing for what they had never been permitted to claim. Their mourning was not of possession lost, but of opportunity withheld.

Consider the story of Abigail Adams, who in a letter to her husband John Adams, urged him to “remember the ladies” when building the new laws of the American republic. She mourned not what she had lost, but what she and all women had never been granted: a voice in governance, the power to shape the future. Her words reveal the truth of Billings’ saying—that women’s grief often springs from deprivation, from a door never opened, rather than from one once walked through and closed.

Yet Billings’ quip also carries deeper insight into the nature of human desire itself. Men, having once tasted possession, suffer in its absence, unable to release the shadow of memory. Women, who in many ages were denied possession, ache instead for possibility, for the dream of what could have been. Both griefs are real, yet they differ in origin: one tied to remembrance, the other to imagination.

The lesson is twofold: that human sorrow is shaped not only by nature, but by society’s divisions, and that the grief of women, so long dismissed, is in fact a cry for justice. To deny them opportunity is to condemn them to eternal mourning for what they “ain’t got.” True healing, then, comes not from soothing the sorrow of loss alone, but from removing the barriers that keep so many from ever having.

Let the generations remember: grief is universal, but its forms are shaped by the lives we are allowed to live. If men weep for yesterday, and women weep for what never was, then the path of wisdom is clear—to build a world where no one is denied their chance, and where mourning need not flow from chains unjustly placed. For when all have equal claim to their portion of life, then sorrow may be lessened, and joy more freely shared.