Member-only story
The Profundity of Sadness
Sadness is a contemplative emotion.
Sadness is a post-event emotion. Whereas we might be afraid of what might happen, we become saddened by what has already happened. Sadness inspires rumination and regret. Sadness demands that we examine and learn from the failures of the past. There is no other emotion capable of pushing us so deeply into that quiet, pensive place within the confines of our mind.
When truly despondent, we enter a sort of dark underworld, where nothing but badness and shades of grey exist; sunny days are all too bright; smiling faces are only lying masks; and all sensations are reduced to bland, numb, colorless, scentless insipidity. Though there is not much good to be found in the darker shades of sadness, the enveloping effect of this emotional enclosure is never felt more palpably than at its peak intensity.
The lighter shades of sadness afford a supernatural tinting of the world, as though the spirits have by some measure gained sway on the material plane. There is a dreamlike fancifulness to moderate dejection. It does not make the world its own, like the more potent varieties, but simply colors all of one’s thoughts. One is able to see joy in others, but as it was with Tantalus before us, all cool waters rush away from thirsty mouths and all nourishing foods flee from hungry stomachs.
This more moderate sadness withdraws from the world in such a way as to view it from a place of disconnectedness. It’s as if the world continues to churn about, but we are only walking ghosts, slow-moving observers of the whole. This is a new and invaluable perspective. And as with any shift to a new plane of existence — for melancholy is a toe dipped into the river Styx — there comes a new perch from which to view the world and sight of all those things that were hidden when we were among the joyous living.
When we are in the shade of some sadness, we can confront pain head-on. Pain, like the burning sun, can never be looked at directly without some tinted lens to look through, and sorrow is that lens. A downcast mind can see the dark underbelly of every relationship, the suffering throughout every society, and the hopelessness of all existence. These things do exist; they’re not apparitions. But they are too insalubrious for healthy minds; there is…
