Honors College Art & Science of Emotions Fall 2017 (1:20 p.m.) Sadness Journal | Page 5

Alexandra Petri from the Washington Post writes “No one actually wants to hear the answer. In fact, if
you actually answer the question, it’s viewed as a serious faux pas,”. Although we might respond sympa-
thetically, we often think worse of the other person as a result of them being honest. Petri goes on to
write “secretly you would resent the pants off me for breaking the unwritten code of conversation”. Most
of the time, we don’t feel like we have time to listen to other people's’ problems. Thus, the message is
clear: “If you’re feeling sad, I don’t want to hear about it.”
Suppressing our grief and sadness can have disastrous effects on our ability to feel positive emo-
tions. Mark Hiveman, the founder of Body-Psyche, states that if we suppress our sadness that “emotionally
we’re stuck in the past. Anchored to old feelings of heartache, we cannot experience new joys, loves and
dreams. Everything is tarnished by our subterranean pain,”. When we listen to society and simply try to
move on from our sadness rather than actually feeling it, we tie ourselves down emotionally. We bring
with us heavy baggage that weighs us down and prevents us from feeling the true nature of happiness and
joy. In order to have those positive feelings, we must fully express our negative feelings. In his song If You
Want Love, NF highlights his disappointment that no one informed him that you can’t have love without
pain: “I wish somebody woulda told m e, if you want love, you gon’ have to go through the pain”. NF has
realized that without feeling pain and expressing your sadness, you can’t have love.
Contradicting society and being open and expressive with our emotions leads to a more healthy
and enriched life. We can witness this in our own lives and put it into practice. During Compelling, an
Intervarsity Christian Fellowship conference, there was dedicated time to meet with all the students from
our school and discuss how the weekend was going (called Chapter time). In our “chapter” time, students
from Oakland University were sharing stories and testimonies with each other. The night took a turn,
however, when people starting sharing tragic and terrible things they were currently dealing with. Stu-
dents shared their struggles with relatives passing away, a friend dying suddenly, and siblings with untreat-
5.