An Unusual Emotion by Atul Singh

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated Flees do it. They are all sad sometime. Humans too for that matter. If you never got sad, you perhaps aren’t human. So you can stop reading and continue your joy-ride. I speak for rest of us folks. 

There are just as many colors of sadness, as there are of happiness. But who wants to talk about happiness. It will only irritate some of you. You just got off seeing your friend’s Instagrams posts and you are already a bit triggered, I know. So many effing happy people. Let’s talk about someplace less discussed and equally visited. Let’s talk about colors of sadness and the romance of marinating in your own juice. That too.

So a tragedy happening to ourselves or those we know or care for makes us sad. A personal loss, someone putting us down or criticizing us, missing of a cherished goal, by us or a loved one, including a favorite sports team draws us down in some strange way. So many different contours of that special place we visit sometime, aren’t they? 

Yet the question remains, why do we get sad. To the ones who upon reading a book or two by Richard Dawkins see evolution as the ultimate cause of everything, what evolutionary advantage does living in brine for a few days or eating worms right out of the can or having a deep dark fluffy cloud hang over your head give you towards survival? If anything it makes you an easier meal to catch, since your elan vital is so depleted in times of real sadness. Heck many a times, in times of real duress, we would offer up ourselves to a friendly lion. Won’t we. Think about losing a child or finding out something eggregious about a partner or a friend. It mentally sinks us quite a bit. So, how are we better off for it, in the longer term? 

One could argue that being sad in a friend or family’s unfortunate circumstance could build certain bonds, due to commiseration and since we are social beings it stands us in good stead over the long haul. But on the whole, that still does not explain any real advantage when we are sad for our own reasons which is where we are mostly. 

I wonder what happens physiologically to deliver such state of mind. Lack of serotonin uptake? That would make us less enthusiastic about life in general. Perhaps many other harmons that keep us happy held back? But why? Why does our body decide that since this person’s father died, let me stop giving him the normal treatment I give him daily. Since his emotions are in a turmoil, let me make him lethargic and weak and basically lay him flat on the ground. Oh! his wife left him with three kids to feed and crop in the land ready to be harvested? let me make him languid and jelly like in his limbs, and thoughts. 

If you were expecting answers, I have none. But I made you think, didn’t I?

So let me make you think some more. No one likes to be sad, correct? 

Not correct. We love our melancholy too, many a times. All those sad songs, all those Shakespeare tragedies, all those drunk nights by ourselves, steeping in it. Don’t forget those. We love to cook in our own broth plenty too. 

But on the whole the sucking of air out of our lungs that sadness brings is not welcome most of the time. There are degrees of it too, some more manageable than others. Perhaps, sadness is there in our lives so we can recognize happy. So we can enjoy happy. So happy can be seen for what it is, a fleeting moment of beautiful respite in life’s otherwise endless march to somewhere. 

Nowhere may be. 

Now that would be sad, wouldn’t it. If it is all for naught! Who can know for sure, who can really really ever know for sure.