Sadness: An Aesthetic

I’ve been contemplating gratitude for sadness.

I don’t mean a cliché “shadow proves the sunshine” sort of gratitude, since the heat of the sun has convinced me without any need for shadows.

And while sometimes sadness comes at the loss of something good, reminding us not to take for granted the good things in our life, there is more to sadness that adds to life.

Various research has shown that sadness (distinct from persistent depression) promotes improved functioning in judgment and detail recall. Moreover, embracing sadness requires intentional living to cope, heal, and accommodate difficult experiences. It prompts us to slow down and be present, leading to an increase in self-awareness and empathy. This also engenders meaning by connecting feelings to experiences and processing them.

This connection between sadness and meaning bears repeating: sadness can engender meaning. While “meaning” is an involved concept (one I’ve written about here and here, among other places), I’ll work off a subjective understanding of it for now, something like carrying existential weight or the impression of being serious or important.

This descriptive understanding of meaning is important because of what it lacks. Meaning is not felt as happiness. Research shows that while happiness and meaning are positively related, they are nevertheless distinct experiences.

That research also shows that higher levels of worry, stress, and anxiety are linked with higher levels of meaning (and lower levels of happiness).

I’m sure any parents reading this can agree with the previous statement. I’m told having children [read: having the opportunity to worry about children] can be a significant source of meaning. Moreover, parenting as a constant form of giving may be a good example of what research also confirms: that meaningfulness is linked with being a giver while happiness is linked with being a taker.

Finally, reflection on personal identity and self-expression are linked to meaning, but not happiness. It is perhaps here that I return to my contemplation of sadness, as few people reflect on identity and prioritize self-expression without a prompting. Happiness trends toward myopia, while sadness encourages an integration of past, present, and future, which is associated with high meaningfulness.

There is compelling research in support of sadness as a life-enhancing emotion; however, before I move on, I want to offer a more recent perspective on emotions in general that may help expand our understanding of the topic.

Emotions are commonly thought of as intrinsic to the human experience, internal reactions to external stimuli instilled in us as evolutionarily helpful. In this view, emotions happen to us and all we can do is try to create external conditions that prompt their occurrence. Lisa Feldman Barrett offers the updated perspective, relying on decades of research on emotions to argue against the traditional understanding.

My summary of Barrett’s explanation is that emotions are essentially coordinates on a graph of sensation: the x-axis ranges from relaxed to alert and the y-axis from pleasant to unpleasant. Any emotion we might identify falls somewhere within these four quadrants. The way we interpret that experience is based on inherited cultural categories (this is supported by the cross-cultural variability in emotions).

In other words, emotions are a social construction.

Barrett’s theory does not take away from the validity of the experience. Sadness remains sadness, happiness: happiness, and so on. Instead, Barrett’s insight empowers us to move past or reconstruct our emotional landscape.

We can create a more nuanced experience of happiness, sadness, and meaning than the simplistic binaries of happy/sad and meaning/meaningless. Much like the swirling yellow and blue memory orb from Disney Pixar’s Inside Out, we need a more sophisticated appreciation for the complexities of meaning and emotion.

The gratitude I feel for sadness, and for being exposed to a deeply felt spectrum of emotions, comes from experiences I have been privileged to integrate into my self-understanding.

Sometimes I think pandering to our emotions is a healthy way to refresh the dynamics of the human condition when critical thought has objectified otherwise ineffable experience.

Sometimes we need to stop and, in whatever broken speech and limping metaphor we have, be thankful for experience at all.

I see the value of sadness to truly hope. I know the privilege of sadness, and the saccharine return to happiness.

I see the value of love to truly long. I know the privilege of a deeply felt life, of a world saturated with color.

I feel the need for meaning to truly live. I know the privilege of meaning, both the weeds and the tree of life it can cultivate.

I continue my pursuit of contentment as an appreciation for happiness, gratitude for sadness, and presence throughout.