When I was younger, I thought I was odd, or maybe just misunderstood whenever I would tell people I loved sad songs and they looked at me like I was crazy.
My favorite SoCo tracks were Me And The Moon and Konstantine. I loved Radiohead’s Creep, Chopin’s Nocturnes, Homer’s very last line in the Iliad, and all of Shakespeare’s tragedies. But listening to these songs over and over again, and reading these particular scripts, I was struck by a question: What did it mean to me, and why did it mean so much?
I would wonder, how could something so sad make me feel so alive? How could Hector’s funeral rites in the fallen city of Troy move me so chemically? How could I want both happiness and melancholy?
When people think about living a happy life, they often think about living a life that excludes any sadness.
We are encouraged to live a happy life, and most of the time try doing whatever it takes to stop feeling sad. But by trying to intuitively avoid things like sadness, are we then not forcing an unnatural feeling of happiness?
Surely, what people want is to be happy. Utilitarians would rest on the premise that more happiness and everywhere, is always a good thing. It’s good to be happy. I certainly know I want happiness, yet the complex truth for me is still I don’t wish to be happy all the time. This does not mean purposely invoking sad feelings; this means allowing myself to feel everything. When I am sad, it is often because of a cause, but perhaps there is a sense in which emotional ‘anything’ is better than singularity.
I truly believe that sadness, for me has inspired some of my greatest thinking and work. It inspires me in a way that sitting on my bed and watching Netflix cannot.
It was Charles Darwin, in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), who noted that sadness manifests the same way in all cultures. The work in this area focuses almost entirely upon depression, which is not what we are talking about here. But many theories have been proposed to contrast the striking difference between what is ‘sad’ and what is ‘depression.’
As most of us are aware, depression is something completely different than just feeling ‘sad.’ Depression is an illness that involves the body, mood, and thoughts and that affects the way a person eats, sleeps, feels about himself or herself, and thinks about things. Depression is not the same as a passing blue mood. It is not a sign of personal weakness or a condition that can be wished away. People with depression cannot merely 'pull themselves together' and get better. Without treatment, symptoms can last for weeks, months, or years (Medicine Net 1). Depression is like a cancer of the mind; it is not beautiful for those who have experienced it or are experiencing it, but sadness can be.
According to science-fiction author Adam Roberts, "if depression is a foul miasma wreathing the brain, elegant sadness is more like a peacock’s tail, coloured in blue-gentian and rich marine greens."
It is also the insight of Virgil’s Aeneas, as he looks back over his troubled life and forward to troubles yet to come: sunt lacrimae rerum; the Latin phrase for "tears of things" (Aeneid 1:462).
Sadness contributes to my entire being feeling full. If I were to only experience sadness or happiness singularity, everyday would look the same to me.
Fullness, is deep within the soul. It encompasses everything and provides the contrast that we need. How else can we know true joy if we have never known sorrow? How can we feel and trust the deepest kind of love if we have never felt heartbreak?
There is a form of art within this context called chiaroscuro. It is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition.
I believe that two seemingly conflicting emotions can fit together and coexist. By valiantly attempting to squander negative feelings, we are in a way taking the shading of our own identity.
I suppose the point is, to feel anything is better than only feeling one thing.
Anyone can be happy, but it takes greater strength to live and be sad. Some sad things are terrible to witness, some absolute tragedies, but I no longer see it as something that costs, but instead, something that can be beautiful. Happiness has the constant ability to be beautiful, but some breeds of sadness have access to beauties that happiness can
never know.
