Honors College Art & Science of Emotions Fall 2017 (1:20 p.m.) Sadness Journal | Page 4

Feeling Sadness
By: Nathan Hyde
Our culture prevents us from feeling an optimal range of emotions by convincing us to suppress
our sadness and pretend we’re happy. The artist NF says in his song If You Want Love: “Ask me how I’m
doing I say okay, but ain’t that what we all say?”. It’s looked down upon in our society to talk about our
issues and “make a big deal” out of something negative which happened to us. We’re told to bottle up our
feelings and put a smile on our face. Attempting to bury these feelings and move on with our lives causes
us to harm our brains and prevents us from feeling other positive emotions.
When people and artists express their emotions they receive push back from society which tells
them to simply “be happy”. After releasing a very emotional album that dealt with a lot of his personal is-
sues, the rapper NF received a lot of hate saying
that he should write more happy raps. He ad-
dresses it in his song Therapy Session: “Why
don’t you write us some happy raps? All of your
music is moody and dark Nate...Don’t get me
We always ask each other
“ How are you? ”, but always
expect the other person to
just say “ good ” or “ okay ”...
started”. The popularity of his music, however, shows that many people can relate to his emotions and
appreciate feeling sad “with” him. NF gets frustrated when people tell him to smile more because he
knows that’s not what he is truly feeling. He asks: “You want me to smile? You want me to laugh...And
put on a mask?” We always ask each other “How are you?”, but always expect the other person to just say
“good” or “okay”. If someone says they’re doing “bad” or “terrible”, we’re not exactly sure what to do.
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