This week I was intrigued by a very important question that one of my English professors asked my class, \u201cWhat is sadness for?\u201d. We were discussing a film, Inside Out, to support The Affect Theory that he introduced to us early on in the week. According to Silvan Tomkins, in his novel, \u201cAffect Imagery Consciousness\u201d, the affect theory is when affects, or \u201cbiological portion of emotion\u201d are sorted into different discrete categories and triggered to perform a certain response. For example, when a person feels the affect joy, he\/she generally displays smiling. When my professor asked us this question, I suddenly dreamed of a world without sadness. The world felt brighter if we are all happy and positive. However, like most dreams that I have, they aren\u2019t always true, valid, or plausible. We, in fact, need sadness in our lives whether we like it or not.<\/p>\n
Our class started brainstorming many great ideas, that sadness is for coping with loss and agony in our lives. My friend mentioned that \u201csadness is there so we don\u2019t take happiness for granted.\u201d In the end of the lecture, we came to the conclusion that in the act of sadness, care can be taken; sadness helps us take care of ourselves and others. Sadness then becomes one of our defence mechanisms. It alerts us that something in our bodies\/ lives require our utmost attention.<\/p>\n
We now live in an idealized society where a good life means being constantly happy. We are so immersed in this idea from everyday influences that it seems like if we feel sadness, there is something lacking in our lives, that we\u2019re not \u201cdoing it right\u201d and we should just \u201cget over it.\u201d I wonder, how do we get over an emotion, as if it\u2019s something we can change like the colour of our hair or the clothes that we wear.<\/p>\n
In reference to one of my favourite John Green quotes, \u201cwithout pain (sadness in this case), how could we know joy?\u201d Perhaps we live in a world where we need that equilibrium. We must have two opposite emotions and feel each of them at separate times to have a balanced and fulfilling life.<\/p>\n
What do you think sadness is for? Comment below and let\u2019s start talking about our emotions! It\u2019s a conversation that is not spoken of enough, especially in today\u2019s society. There is nothing wrong with feeling and expressing our emotions. There certainly is no shame in admitting this emotion, sadness. Our emotions, whatever they are, are all valid and deserve to be felt because there is no need to hide them. We can\u2019t be happy all the time, or else our happiness wouldn\u2019t be worth anything.<\/p>\n
Written by Charlotte Nip<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week I was intrigued by a very important question that one of my English professors asked my class, \u201cWhat is sadness for?\u201d. We were discussing a film, Inside Out, to support The Affect Theory that he introduced to us early on in the week. According to Silvan Tomkins, in his novel, \u201cAffect Imagery Consciousness\u201d, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40852,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40852"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4353"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4355,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions\/4355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcmhac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}