Honors College Art & Science of Emotions Fall 2017 (1:20 p.m.) Sadness Journal | Page 31

Sadness
Diana Pant
Sadness Billy Ocean sang in the eighties: ‘There'll be sad songs to make you cry, love songs often
do.’ It seems like some sort of sick paradox that love can and does bring on so much sadness. It is also odd
that people love to listen to sad songs and watch sad movies, even though no one enjoys being sad or wish-
es to become miserable. Wouldn’t life be better off without ever feeling
sad? Isn’t the goal to be striving towards happiness and fulfillment in our
lives? We regularly receive messages that to be successful we need to
‘Think Positive, Be Positive’ and learn how to see the brighter side of life
and remain positive no matter what. Many use the quote attributed to
Helen Keller, “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shad-
“There is an
unspoken message
that feeling sad is
essentially failing at
reaching our goal of
being a successful
person.”
ow.” For this reason, I feel that when we experience the emotion of sad-
ness our automatic response is to try to resume a feeling of happiness as quickly as possible. There is an
unspoken message that feeling sad is essentially failing at reaching our goal of being a successful person.
The previous statement may seem a little severe, but successful people are never portrayed as being sad
unless something tragic has happened. They would be ‘allowed’ to experience sadness only under ex-
treme circumstances, otherwise the public expects to see them perpetually happy. We have been pro-
grammed with this ideology from a very early age.
However, the truth is we all experience sadness from time to time. Sometimes we know why we are sad,
other times we may not. This does not indicate that something is wrong with us. It does not mean that we
will be unsuccessful in life. Being sensitive to all feelings is vital for our emotional well-being. There is a
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