(#23 ISW) The Power of Sadness

Older - Shallou, Daya

The Do Selfish Well Newsletter’s Introspection Song of the Week series is meant to aid your self-exploration by uniquely tying songs with thought-provoking topics that get you to think about yourself in new ways. Check out the full-length newsletters for more in-depth discussions on select topics.

---

This song is pure pain, sadness, longing, and hope expressed in three minutes and thirty-eight seconds. The same pain, sadness, longing, and hope that I have experienced as seemingly everyone around me finds relationships and gets married. And sometimes that is exactly what we need.

According to a study by University of Michigan professors that is cited in Susan Cain’s book Bittersweet, people whose favorite song was happy and upbeat listened to it about 175 times on average. For people whose favorite song was bittersweet though (sadness mixed with another “positive” emotion), that average astonishingly jumped to almost 800 times! The reason for this massive difference was apparent from what the study participants told the professors.

The participants whose favorite songs were bittersweet felt a deeper connection to the music and associated these types of songs with profound beauty, transcendence, nostalgia, and common humanity, all of which gave the songs meaning to these participants that happy songs just don’t have. As Susan puts it in her book, “upbeat tunes make us want to dance around our kitchens and invite friends for dinner. But it’s sad music that makes us want to touch the sky.”

This study is just a taste of how powerful and elevating of an emotion sadness can be. Sadness is a universal connector among all people. Everyone suffers. Everyone experiences sadness. Sadness is also the foundation for empathy and deeper connection with other humans. The more that you feel and understand your own pain and suffering, the more you understand the pain and suffering of others.

Sadness can also be a catalyst for creativity, like mine has been for this newsletter. The pain that we can’t get rid of we can transform in many different ways. Sometimes, beauty arises from the sadness, which is what happened for a woman I’ll call Beth that I met and her dog.

Beth had fallen into a deep depression as a result of various life circumstances that included the pandemic. Sometime after her therapist suggested that getting a dog might help her climb out of this depressive state, she got her dog, and the therapist was right. Now, with obvious emotion in her voice and on her face, Beth tells me she doesn’t know where she’d be today if she didn’t get her dog when she did. This kind of beautifully meaningful connection with another living being can only come through sadness. There is no other way to get it.

And yet, American culture expects and demands positivity and smiles, unless the situation is one that is socially approved for sadness, like a death or a breakup. But forced smiles and constant positive spin can deprive you of so much. Give yourself permission to feel sad when something makes you feel sad. You’ll be better off for it.

Take care of yourself,

Alex