“There is something beautiful in reveling in sadness.
The proof is how beautiful sad songs can be.
I don’t think being sad is to be avoided.
It’s apathy and boredom you want to avoid.
But feeling anything is good, I think.”
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Sadness is something I'd like to think I spent my life trying to avoid, but there have been moments when I have reveled in it, when I have spoiled myself with it, consuming more than my share until I was too full to move. I've claimed not to want it, but I have dug in all too willingly when it was served up. I used to think this was a bad thing, my propensity for sorrow, but as I've made my way along the path to living a more positive and present life, I've learned that sadness is not something to be avoided. Rather, it is something that should be embraced, experienced, and explored.
Too often when people think about living a positive life, they imagine a life without any emotions that we typically think of as negative -- sadness, anger, frustration, fear, etc. There is this misconception of living positively that assumes that a positive life is one that includes nothing but happiness and pretty positive thoughts. While, of course, those are part of living positively, they are not the only emotions and experiences one must have to live a positively present life.
To feel anything, as the quote says above, is good. What's even better is to allow ourselves to feel what we're feeling. What used to hold me back a great deal was my valiant attempts to squash negative feelings. I desperately wanted to be happy and I believed, naively, that the way to do this was to push away all negative emotions and let happiness rise to the surface. I believed that it was sadness that was holding happiness back and if I just moved that sadness aside (even if I had to hold it back with all my strength), the happiness would come skipping on into my life. Now I know that's not how it works.
How To Experience the Beauty of Sadness
1. Accept + embrace your sadness. The first step to experiencing sadness is being willing to accept and embrace it. This can be extremely difficult to do, especially if you have a tendency to avoid negative emotions. Don't be ashamed of your sadness or feel as if you should not be experiencing it. You are entitled to feel how you want to feel -- and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. When you feel sadness, allow yourself to focus on it, understand it, and accept it for what it is. Don't judge it as good or bad; just let it be and embrace it. You are experiencing it for a reason.
2. Set your sadness free. Do not cage it in, hold it back, or restrain it in any way. As hard as it might be to just let it all out (it makes it so much more real, doesn't it?), don't hold back. Seeing those people with their flowing tears, their emotions running free, was such an inspiration to me. It made me realize that it is okay to be sad and, more importantly, it's necessary. Without setting sadness free, it remains trapped inside of us, flapping about like a bird in a cage. To experience the beauty that comes with true pain, we must set our sadness free.
3. Look for the beauty in it. It might seem elusive at first, this beauty, but don't be fooled. It is there. It is always there. Where there is sadness, there once was happiness. Look for what it is that was lost and embrace that for what it was. In the case of my aunt's service, I saw so much beauty in the sadness there because the sadness came from the positive life she had lived, the people she had loved, and the loss of her presence in the world. Focus on what was beautiful, and more importantly, what is still beautiful now.
4. Don't let others cage you. When it comes to sadness (or any emotion, really), it can be hard not to be held back worrying about what others might think when you set your emotions free, but don't let what others think (or what you think they might think) get in the way of experiencing your emotions. Even when it's hard, don't hold back because of other people. The people in your life should accept you for who you are -- and what you're feeling -- and if they don't then they're not the kind of people you want in your life anyway.
5. Bring yourself back to the now. Sadness can be beautiful, purposeful, and necessary, but it is often a result of mourning for what was or what could have been. After you have allowed yourself to experience it for a time period that seems right to you, bring yourself back to the present moment. Direct your attention to the things around you that are happy, that inspire you, that you find to be uplifting. While experience sadness is essential to living a positive life, dwelling in sadness is not. Always bring yourself back to the present and remind yourself of what's happening in this moment.
To experience true happiness, to live a truly positive life, one must experience a whole range of emotions. Rather than holding emotions back, we have to allow ourselves to feel whatever it is we must feel. We must also realize that sadness and many other negative emotions often occurs as an attachment to the past or the future. While we should allow ourselves to experience it fully, we should not indulge excessively in it.
I've always been a person of extremes, which is why this lesson has been a hard one for me to learn. I used to think I had to be happy or sad, never realizing it was essential to have a balance, never understanding that it was overindulgence in sadness, not the sadness itself, that turned positives into negatives. I now know that sadness -- and any emotion -- should be allowed, embraced, and incorporated into life. Avoidance, I've found, is the key to unhappiness.
Therefore, I'd encourage you to feel what you must, when you must, but I'd encourage you to do so with the five steps above in mind. Emotions, especially sadness, are powerful things and it's up to us not to avoid them or push them away but instead to find the best way to experience the beauty that comes with allowing ourselves to feel.
(♥)
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