Swimming Upstream

I was listening to an old Hindi film song not long ago in which a man addresses a woman thus.  “You, who are smiling so, what sorrow does your smile conceal?  Tears in your eyes, laughter on your lips…”  The original is much more elegant than my translation, but the idea is clear.  There are people who might be some of us, or all of us at some time or another, who are — despite appearances — swimming upstream through a river of sorrow.