Happiness and sadness are emotional states; they come and go.
I was recently discussing sadness with an Irish friend. He told me, “When we feel sadness, we should embrace the emotion, at least for a time, rather than pushing it away in an effort to be happy. If we don’t get to know our lows, how will we know our highs?” I think he is right.
Now for philosophy. He is in effect applying the principle that, “we only know many things because we know their absence, a lack.” For example, I know that my friends are loyal because previously in my life, I knew disloyal friends. But does our principle apply to man’s mental state? Certainly we can understand what it means to be happy, because at other times we have not been happy. But we want to not only understand what happiness is but frequently experience it. So what is the difference between conceptually knowing something and actually experiencing that thing?
Consider: I once got the flu and was quite sick; I was in a lot of pain for a good while. The interesting thing is that for a few days after I recovered, I was intimately aware of the lack of pain that I was experiencing. I felt good, and I was intimately aware of that fact! Years later I’m in the same state of good health, yet I don’t feel good in the way I did after my illness. Try as I might, I cannot feel how healthy I am as I sit here typing. I’m not experiencing my current lack of pain; I’m oblivious to it.
So what causes us to experience mental states and not merely know them conceptually? My good feeling faded; clearly time has a role. I am barely aware of my health after a minor sickness; the power of the opposite mental state plays some part.
If we don’t regularly feel deep sadness, why should we expect to regularly feel deep happiness? The two come together; the denial of proper sadness is akin to the denial of happiness. We should allow ourselves to feel grief when a family member has died. When a friend suffers, we should cry with them and feel their low. Refusing to suffer alongside someone can not only hurt others but directly make us less happy.
“It’s better to feel pain than nothing at all.” – Stubborn Love, The Lumineers
Unresolved questions:
Pain is a state of being, yet long-sufferers always remain conscious of the pain. How is it that chronic pain remains an acute part of the human experience, yet pleasure and other states fade to normality?
