In defense of Sadness

"Some philosophers and psychiatrists have suggested that we are investing our great wealth in researching and treating mental illness — medicalizing ever larger swaths of human experience — because we have rather suddenly lost older belief systems that once gave meaning and context to mental suffering."

I finally watched Disney's Inside Out, a film with anthropomorphized emotions and concretized representations of the human psyche. At the beginning of the movie, I was nervous that the character called Sadness was getting a bad rap. It seemed like her companion Joy was trying to make sure Sadness had no place in the life of the child in whose mind they dwelt. But as the movie progressed, Joy realized how important Sadness was, and they had to try to work together to make it back into the child's consciousness. The movie only covered a few days of this child's life, and showed how much was happening with her emotions during that time. At one point the child almost became emotionally flat. Sadness ends up reappearing and saving the day. In this way, I see her as vindicated. What followed was the beautiful miracle of intertwined sadness and joy.

I was very impressed with this ending, but I wonder how the movie was received by what I presume to be the intended audience: children. Before I had seen it, my cousin remarked that she didn't like that movie because it made her cry. It made me cry too! But apparently the message that I gleaned from it was lost on her. If crying and sadness are seen as the enemy, I don't think it makes room for joy but rather a flat affect-- a deficit rather than the presence and experience of something positive. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and encourage superficial joy devoid of meaning, but a true joy that is born from suffering. Let us look to the cross for our example of love, not fearing the sadness and pain, but always trusting that joy can be granted in the midst of it, and look with hope to the resurrection.

"we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." - Romans 5:3-5