Why Is Sadness Actually Good For You?
Out of all the emotions we experience, happiness tends to be the one that people strive for the most. Concurrently, sadness is viewed as an unpleasant feeling to steer clear of and to try to avoid at all costs.
This outlook is derivative from our society’s unwavering idealism to promote optimistic thinking and positive behavior, which as a result, ultimately labels sadness as a painful emotion that needs to be suppressed and kept at bay.
From an evolutionary standpoint, the basic emotions aside from sadness -which are classified as happiness, anger, fear, and disgust, have been unquestionably helpful to us to guarantee our survival. They assisted our ancestors in many ways preparing them adaptively to seek, to fight, to flight or to avoid particular encounters. But where does sadness stand in all of this? Is there any real meaning behind its existence?
With no doubt, in between all of our emotions, sadness seems to be pointless, and also, it’s hard to grasp the evolutionary asset behind it. Interestingly, this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have one, otherwise, we would have certainly evolved into a species that doesn’t feel sad at all, because we simply wouldn’t need it. Does that mean that we do actually need it? If so, how can sadness be beneficial to us?
Let’s be honest, through our own experience with sad events along with our cultural orientation towards cheerful practices, sadness is always going to be considered an undesirable sentiment. It’s an eternal fact of existence that we will always seek happy things and bypass the sad ones. Ironically, this is all thanks to sadness. This rejected emotion is by far what fashion our guidance system through life, showing us what are the things to pursue and what are the things to avoid. In other words, sadness can steer us toward the direction we need to go to create a more meaningful, connected, fulfilling life. So it is basically what gives happiness it’s value.
It is hard to identify the evolutionary benefit of sadness because it is related to us spiritually, so its impact on our survival remains delicate. When we behave in a particular way, and we feel sad about it, that given feeling of regret prevents us from acting similarly again, so we become better individuals.
It’s in the sad moments where we tend to explore ourselves and learn more about our needs and longings. Sadness is the ultimate tool of our soul to protest against our condition and tell us what needs to be changed. Because, it is our nature, through pain and suffering, we learn, we become stronger and we mature.
Many thanks for reading.
