The Value of Sadness

In our quest to never be sad
We saturate ourselves in corgis playing with balls
Pandas rolling off logs
Bats stretching
And cats failing to be catlike.
In our quest to never be sad
We SQUUUEEEEEE
And LOLOLOLOL
And have “all the feels.”
Because we have decided that feeling sad is the pits.

And it is.
And it should be.

There is strength in sadness.
Sadness is empathy.
The ability to see that all is not shiny
Proves our link to each other.
Happiness is a lovely thing,
But to drown in happiness is ignorance writ large
in an unending stream of sloth .gifs

Sadness forces quiet.
Screech joy, whisper condolences.
We fear seeing hearts in pain
Lest we be reminded of our own scars
Lest we be reminded in moments of quiet
That we have our own interior ash piles,
Remnants of fires we savored and lost.

—-

I’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of animal videos on my Facebook as of late. And by all the caps lock joy from my adult friends who simply “Can’t even!” with “all the feels!” That lack of specificity, that need to be exuberant always strikes me as unhealthy. Almost as much as the flip-flop between overly joyful and needing hugs posts that populate my wall. It’s as though we’re now operating on this extreme teeter-totter, where on the one hand it’s screaming unintelligible sounds of happiness, and the other is sad emoticons and over-zealous counter emoticons.

Just feel sad – let yourself feel sad. It’s not like you won’t feel happy again. And maybe feeling happy after feeling low will feel better than being made to feel like your sadness is not wanted.