Why Sadness Might be Our Way to Happiness
Let’s start by saying that happiness is not a permanent state. Neither is it the purpose or the main goal of our existence.
When we speak about happiness, we are talking about an experience, a feeling, that undeniably makes this life more enjoyable and fulfilling.
However, despite us living in the most prosperous time in history, few people today can say that their life contains a considerable amount of moments or periods of genuine happiness.
Numerous studies over the past decade, conducted mostly in the US and countries of Western Europe, have shown that less people are feeling happy than ever.
So let’s talk why that might be the case.
Before we address why happiness is lacking from our lives, we should agree on what happiness is in the first place. I don’t feel worthy of giving a universal definition of it, but hopefully we can move on with enough clarity if we identify the opposite of happiness.
An that I found to be relatable and helpful in understanding happiness comes from Erich Fromm’s book “The Sane Society.” According to Erich Fromm, the opposite of happiness is not sadness but depression.
And what is depression?
"It is the inability to feel, it is the sense of being dead, while our body is alive. It is the inability to experience joy, as well as the inability to experience sadness. A depressed person would be greatly relieved if he could feel sad. A state of depression is so unbearable because one is incapable of feeling anything, either joy or sadness."
If we try to define happiness in contrast with depression, we come to define it as a feeling of, as Fromm says, "intensified vitality." Also, we find that happiness must come as a result of productive living. Productive, not in the sense of being industrious, meeting your daily quota, and ticking off all the boxes in your to do list. Productive, in the sense of acting and engaging with the world around you.
"Happiness is a state of intense inner activity and the experience of the increasing vital energy which occurs in productive relatedness to the world and to ourselves."
Why is this definition of happiness especially relevant for our modern society and the lack of happiness we are experiencing?
We live in a culture where terms such as "individual," "person," or even "human being" could easily be swapped, and quite often are, with the word "consumer." In a culture where being a consumer is one’s main feature, very little, or no "inner activity" occurs.
By being first and foremost a consumer one is, by default, in an almost constant state of passivity.
If we take into account Fromm’s definition of happiness, we see that it cannot possibly be achieved in the state of inner passivity and the consumer attitude that characterize the average modern individual.
And here is where we get to see how good humans are in getting in their own way of a fulfilling life. What is one of the main purposes of our constant consumption? It’s precisely avoiding uncomfortable feelings such as sadness and loneliness.
We spend all of our waking hours consuming, whether it’s media, food, drinks, psychoactive substances, or a couple of them together, in order to avoid feeling bad. Because God forbid we experience some internal discomfort, even for a moment!
Our unwillingness to be sad is what makes us unable to be happy. Our obsessive avoidance of life’s pain makes us numb to the joy of being alive.
Don’t get me wrong. I know as well as any of you reading this what it’s like to be too exhausted to sit alone with your pain and sadness. Sometimes, all you want to do is play your favorite show, eat your comfort food, and shut your mind off for a while. And you should as far as I’m concerned. But we must make a distinction between taking some time to relax and recharge and living a life of escapism through constant consumption.
It’s a timeless wisdom, repeated in different traditions across time and space, that the only way out of our suffering is through it. If we allowed this message back into our lives, we would be able to understand how counterproductive our current approach to happiness and fulfillment is. We run away from sadness and pain thinking we will reach happiness, not realizing that we are running in the opposite direction from it.
It is a fact that, no matter how prosperous our societies become and how high level of comfort and safety we manage to attain, life will always have its share of pain, misfortune, and even tragedy that are outside of our control. However, we must acknowledge that we are at fault for bringing one type of unnecessary misery into our lives: the misery that comes from trying to avoid the unavoidable.
My message to you this time, or maybe even a friendly request, is to allow yourself to experience life in its entirety. After all, that’s the only way you get to experience the best of it.
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
Thank you for reading.
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Well done as usual. just wanted to point out my opinion regarding what you called depression. I don’t think it’s quite the right definition, what was defined there is rather apathy.