Sadness and Happiness

[highlander]

"Only once one has known real sadness can one feel true happiness"

True or not true? Why?

 

[Totenkindly]

Well, one question is what does "real" or "true" mean here?

Also, if we just experience one of those, we have nothing to compare it to. They are states of being and if it's the only state, then it is our baseline for experience. Only when we experience ranges of emotion do we then have a better sense of what something is versus something not. Sometimes we can feel happy or sad, but then if we experience a deeper happiness or a deeper sadness, we redefined what those earlier states were in comparison. Maybe what we thought of sad was just more average, and now we have a stronger sense of sadness; and vice versa.

Maybe it would be better to say our understanding of sadness or happiness depends on the depth of our experience with either?

 

[Abcdenfp]

I agree with Toten,
to me the depth and complexity of one does not stop you from feeling the other , rather gives you the spectrum .. a sort of gauge like on a car. If the needle can go all the way one way there is also a maximum on the other end. Remember we only know there is light because there is also darkness

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

Humans often relate to experience based on their relationship to their inner constructs of experience. In this way happiness or sadness are experienced in contrast to the other which can heighten the experience much like sweet and sour flavors exaggerate their effects.

If you can be wholly in the moment and not relating current experience to inner constructs, then I don't think one state is dependent on the other. We see this in the happiness expressed by puppies. Yes?

 

[The Cat]

I compartmentalize both. I tend to not trust either one.

 

[Maou]

This is more to do with how they both compliment and obscure true feelings in the most romantic sense. For any emotion you experience for a prolonged amount of time, you wind up forgetting what the other opposite emotion feels like (normalcy bias). Someone with depression might not even realize they used to feel happy at some point, or recognize they are happy in any moment because they were blinded by their sadness. The same can apply for being content and happy, that when the walls of sadness close in it becomes hard to accept and we reject bad can happen to us. Light shines the brightest, if seen from the darkness. etc

 

[The Cat]

This is more to do with how they both compliment and obscure true feelings in the most romantic sense. For any emotion you experience for a prolonged amount of time, you wind up forgetting what the other opposite emotion feels like (normalcy bias). Someone with depression might not even realize they used to feel happy at some point, or recognize they are happy in any moment because they were blinded by their sadness. The same can apply for being content and happy, that when the walls of sadness close in it becomes hard to accept and we reject bad can happen to us. Light shines the brightest, if seen from the darkness. etc

Disagree? Yes. Disagreement.

 

[JocktheMotie]

No.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

I couldn't have one without the other.

In other words: It's all measured in contrast. That's the human condition and quite possibly (part of) the meaning of life. Your only escape is death or mindfulness.

I don't fear any emotion, only the lack thereof.

 

[anticlimatic]

I couldn't have one without the other.

Just using this part of PD's post to launch into my own take:

Happiness and sadness are measures of the same thing- specifically, the level of serotonin relative to one's median state. After moments of intense sadness the brain will compensate automatically with a flood of dopamine, so it lends to the sense that one's depth of sadness is linked with one's depth of happiness, and that sense is not wrong.

 

[Lark]

"Only once one has known real sadness can one feel true happiness"

True or not true? Why?

Is the converse true too?

 

[Z Buck McFate]

The way I personally interpret that quote is that we have to 'know' sadness in the sense of not being so afraid to feel it that we flee into behaviors/mind-altering chemicals/beliefs that enable us to avoid feeling it. If sadness is so unbearable that we flee from it, then the 'happiness' we feel is likely just whatever can effectively distract us from what we don't want to feel. This mostly coincides with what others are saying about contrast; when we flee from sadness to avoid feeling it, we inadvertently shave a proportionate amount of our capacity for happiness off the other end of the spectrum.

eta: Or something.

A lot of theories about chronic depression - like the way Jon Kabat-Zinn explains depression - is that it's the systematic avoidance of negative feelings which inadvertently proportionately mutes positive feelings on the other end of the spectrum, and it leaves a big gaping void of unbearable numbness.