What is sadness? Think about this question while reading this blog you may of the bat have a preconceived notion that this post will be depressing and it would not be worth reading. But I challenge you to not assume or have a preconceived notion just from the title of this blog. You must also be wondering why is Devashish dwelling into a depressing emotion especially when it is a month of sunshine and rain. Or even better you may not even have any of those thoughts, or you may be just curious as to how I will explain such a depressing emotion and still make it inspiring for you all to read it. This blog post is connected to anger or any other emotional post I may make in the future.
Sadness is a very complicated emotion just like anger and etc. But we all know too well what causes sadness maybe it is a response to a situation, circumstances, emotional response to something we saw or miss someone near to us. This emotion will be the bi-product emotion in response to many emotional blogs I will be posting in the future, which you will notice by the way. So let’s get back to what sadness is! This is how I define sadness and that is sad is an emotion that is flexible to work with all the emotions within our mind, as it is easily expressible through happiness, anger, fear, sadness or even a heartfelt connection to a person or a fictional character in a movie or in a book. In our society sadness is thought to be a negative and a gender-oriented emotion, for example, women are emotional so they are able to cry whenever, whereas men cannot cry because they are supposed to be strong, hardy, and can be seen as a crybaby if they do cry. Just because society has deemed that emotion to be irrelevant to men that do not mean they cannot cry. On the Contrary, I believe that people should be free to express their emotional state freely, however, some of you may disagree, but that is fine. I find that society’s viewpoint on men unable to express their emotional state to be ill logical or irrational thought or norm. Sadness is an emotion that helps us maintain our humanity, helps us reflect on our mistakes and challenges that we have overcome so far, and always forces us to look forward. In many cases from a personal experience of sadness has helped me develop my soft skill of empathy, therefore I am able to channel people’s worries and their crisis that they come to me with to discuss.
How you may ask has sadness made me an empathetic human being? Well when watching movies not sad preferably, I tend to be sucked into the character’s world or feel the emotions they feel within the movie or within a scene of that movie; or even in an anime (Japanese cartoons), I watch. This one particular anime called Violet Evergarden has always never ceased my teary eyes due to the scenes that the protagonist and the clients play. Violet Evergarden is about a woman who writes letters for people all around the world that means she travels a lot for her clients to write them their letter and see it delivered to the rightful person. The main part of the anime is when she meets her clients who she is hired to write a letter to. The anime’s storyline is so well done and every micro emotion and non-verbal and verbal dialogues you can relate to the client’s difficulties and main character’s willpower to write the letter, which does not concern them no matter how sad or emotional, the letter is because it is to make the teller strong to leave a mark so they can pass on. And the fact after when you find out what the letter was about you cannot help, but cry for the recipient of the letter. For me or anyone that can somewhat understand humans and their desire to leave a legacy or a positive note before they pass on or to let the recipient know that they are ok. I feel that the main character learns a lot from these faithful encounters with her clients, even though the clients are the one that asks for Violet Evergarden to write the letters for them. It is a beautiful anime regardless of whether you like anime or not, but for sure I recommend watching it to see the relation of sadness and how the client and the main character face’s it through strength, courage, and positive wishes for their recipients. I made a point that at least once a year or a month I will watch or hear the sad music because it makes one relate to the artist that makes the music and also keeps you empathetic and grateful of living in the present.
I recommend watching heartfelt movies or whatever that makes you feel grateful and grounded. Use sadness as that emotion to help you elevate in areas where no emotion can go, but only sadness. You will feel enlightened to the experiences that you acquire and you will come to understand yourself that much more. Do not label it to be a hindering emotion, but instead as an emotion to make other emotions stronger and also your spirit that becomes much stronger as you progress through life, you will also attain strength that you never knew that you had. In fact, all emotions are there to help you out whether they may be good or bad, they are going to be present in your mind. In many cases, sadness has given me the ability to heal or refreshed or rejuvenation and reflect on how far I have come and yet can go. It also makes me grateful for coming across challenges and hurdles that have made me stronger and matured me a bit. To explain further as to how sadness is an important emotion I will give an example that you may be able to relate to better. I saw a video on Facebook where it showed people crying while watching a movie. While, I was watching the video it said that people that cry when watching any movies whether it may be sad or not has the ability to make a meaningful relations to the fictional character’s journey or anyone’s journey in real life in whatever capacity they may be going through one could relate because it shows how much developed you are as a person. The video said that the people that cry not just when watching a movie, but in anything that is worth crying about should be taken care of because those people are very important in this world because they can relate to people’s challenge and hardships faster in a more developed empathetic way. I also recommend watching that video, which is on Facebook on my timeline or saved under my profile.
First, accept sadness. Realize that without losing, winning isn’t so great.
——Alyssa Milano
So, now that you have read about how sadness can be a reflective and a strengthening emotion; do you still think sadness is a depressive emotion or do you think that all emotions have the ability to make you strong mentally, physically, and spiritually in some capacity? I leave that interpretation up to you. Because I know for sure that sadness has made me more reflective and to realize that I have the power to move forward with sadness on my back constantly backing my state of mind up, I know that I have nothing to feel worried about. It also has made me humble, grounded, and grateful for the life I am living in this very moment. So my question at the beginning of the blog about what is sadness to you, because until you don’t find the answer for yourself you will never allow sadness to help you push yourself further and for you to keep growing in your life and learning. Even though other emotions are there to help you in that endeavour, but you will always feel that some part of you is always missing.
Risinghero 