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Keith Higgins Lagos ENG 1100 17 September 2013 The Importance Of Sadness Happiness and sadness each play a profound role in how we live our lives. While most people emphasize endlessly on happiness it would be nothing without sadness to balance it out. Even the happiest person cannot claim that he or she has never felt sadness. Like most things in life there needs to be a balance of the two in order for there to be a healthy outlook on life. Sadness is necessary to us personally, socially, and as a species because of the sobering effect it has on our perspective in that it gives us a sense of realism in the world. The concept of sadness in and of itself proves to be a more real concept than happiness. People can define sadness much easier than happiness. Everybody has felt sadness and the pain that comes along with it which more often than not proves to be quite memorable. As opposed to happiness, sadness can be identified practically with examples like grief over a person or physical pain. Unlike sadness, happiness proves to be an elusive and an especially intangible concept. Mark Kingwell describes the issue of describing happiness in his essay In Pursuit Of Happiness. In this essay he writes, The first thing to realize about happinessis that trying to provide a one sentence definition of it is always a mugs game. (Kingwell) Within this sentence Kingwell is referring to the long and fruitless history of great philosophers and scientists who have tried to define happiness to no avail. In fact Kingwell argues that the mere act of attempting

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to define happiness puts one closer away from the feeling of happiness and that this effort brings sadness. He even goes so far as to say asking about happiness can only result in unhappiness (Kingwell) and that happiness is the paragon of ineffability (Kingwell). But why is happiness such a hard idea to grasp and put into words? The more one tries to answer whether he is happy or not most often that person will only pile reasons why he is unhappy and will wind up sadder than he was before. John Stuart Mill once wrote Ask yourself whether or not you are happy and you will cease to be so. (Mill) If this is true then the reciprocal proverb stating happiness is bliss appears to make more sense now more than ever. In other words the less one tries to define happiness the happier that person will probably find themselves to be. Within this reciprocating relationship between the processes of defining happiness bringing sadness and ignoring the question of happiness sustaining happiness lies the answer. In this way sadness proves to be a sobering phenomenon as its very observation entails realism while happiness proves otherwise as its existence depends on obliviousness. It has been found that pessimism tends to correspond to realism. In Jennifer Seniors article Some Dark Thoughts On Happiness She interviews several positive psychology experts to get an idea of how happiness affects judgment. As a pessimist herself she appears to argue slightly in favor of pessimism when it comes to whether pessimists are more realistic than optimists. In her essay she writes One of the most interesting bits of American research to surface-repeatedly- in books about happiness is a study that shows depressives are far more likely to be realists while happy people are more likely to walk around in a mild state of delusion. (Senior) This statement objectively shows how pessimists have more realistic expectations and observations of the world around them. She goes further in describing the effect of pessimists on the world and its history. The presidents who gave the most pessimistic

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inaugural speecheswent down in history as being great (Senior). She even goes so far as to imply that president Bushs optimism effected how he handles the Iraq war stating president [George W. Bush] optimistic and full of faithnot quite able to see the world as it is (Senior). Its easy to see that Jennifer Senior is an especially stout supporter among many, including psychologists, that pessimism implies realism. In my own experience I find that my pessimism does indeed make me a realistic person. I scored a 1.88 on the Authentic Happiness Inventory test which even then pretty much met my expectations. I am aware that I am an overall unhappy person. I am also a firm believer in Murphys Law which further prepares me for the pitfalls of reality. While I wish that I was a happier person at most times I am also thankful sometimes for my pessimism as it contributes to my overall life savvies. One example of my benign pessimism is commuting to William Paterson. While its a forty minute commute from my town I am aware that I can consistently get there faster pretty much every day. Even so I still give myself fifty to forty minutes which not only gives me breathing room in terms of time if there is traffic but I also get to school a little early. This is only one of the ways that my pessimism and corresponding realism benefit my life. Happiness and Sadness both play key roles in our everyday lives and overall selves. One cannot exist without the other and too much of either is unhealthy. while balance is the key to living healthily the two dont necessarily have to be at an equilibrium. Some people are happier than others and that cannot be changed. However it is still necessary to recognize the effects of happiness or sadness. As we have seen, sadness plays a role in realism while happiness seems to rely on naivety. One is not more important than the other but both have their profound impact on how we live.

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Senior, Jennifer. "Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness." New York Magazine. 09 06 2006: n. page. Print. Kingwell, Mark. "In Pursuit of Happiness: Better Living from Plato to Prozac." Crown. 1998: n. page. Print. Mill, John Stuart. Autobiography. Vol. XXV, Part 1. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 190914; Bartleby.com, 2001. www.bartleby.com/25/1/.