Is This Too EMO for You?
Originally published at Exponential. You can comment here or there.
This may seem to conflict with one of my previous posts. I hope I can disabuse you of that belief quickly.
A comment to my divorce post really struck home with me. I’ll repeat the specific line here:
“In our culture, we have learned to be insensitive to anything but the mask of happiness.”
In letting this thought tumble on permanent press in my brain for a bit, I think I agree with it.
When someone is upset, we try our best to “cheer them up”. When we are feeling low, the recommendation is to think positively and have hope/faith/belief that things will be OK. When someone is dying, or has died, we are expected to be stoic, strong for others, mourning quietly.
If you’ve ever seen the series Six Feet Under, the first episode draws your attention to how silly this seems.
Do we adequately acquaint ourselves with pain? How do we navigate the delicate balance between whining and acknowledging unhappiness?
We tend to think poorly of those who display unhappiness or are honest about their issues - we look at them as less successful, less equipped to deal with life, less adjusted. The moment your personal dissatisfaction affects your ability to be cheerful, you should be seeking a therapist, or getting an anti-depressant. We use phrases such as:
- Keep a stiff upper lip
- Keep your chin up
- Look on the bright side
- Cheer up - things aren’t so bad
- Don’t let it get you down
- Think of/Focus on the positive
- Keep your glass half full
- Nobody likes a gloomy gus
- Leave your problems at the door
- Look for the silver lining
Does this incessant happy-seeking really help us? Or would we be better served embracing our negative emotion, experiencing it, and then learning from it?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for mass depression. I have talked about the negative voices we deal with, and how happy people tend to think more logically, and many other things that point to happiness as being a factor in our decisions and how successful we feel.
And it is true that even pretending to be happy can actually help you BE happier - you can trick the brain into releasing the chemicals you want. In fact, according to Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist, we can choose a happier, more peaceful state of being (Nirvana Anyone?) by using more of the right side of our brain.
What I’m saying is that without the embracing of the bad things that happen - without being present with those feelings, accepting and recognizing them - we significantly impair our ability to be truly happy. Instead, we are putting on the “mask” of happiness: pretending things are good when there really are issues. Holding our feelings inside of us - or more often these days - taking a medication to feel “normal”. Our Zoloft world is even-keel, understandable, and keeps us out of the emotional highs and lows so that we know where we “should be”.
Or if you aren’t happy, don’t try to find a way to be happy with what you have. Find what makes you happy - at all costs. Someone realizes they are unhappy in a “must be happy” world sheds the current skin of where they are, what they do and seeks all new things, looking for happiness externally.
Is it any wonder that relationships are harder to keep together? If neither person knows how to deal with pain or unhappiness, when difficulties arise it is that much easier to withdraw and discard the perceived source of unhappiness than to look within oneself and feel that pain - and work through it. Dealing with our pain might teach us enough to deal with future issues, or recognizing a problem too big to overcome before it infests too much of our lives.
Perhaps the issue lies not with how much we work on our relationship, but how much we do not work on ourselves. It was Gloria Steinem who said:
Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.”
Working on ourselves and allowing us to feel what is really there might help us to be better partners in our relationships. Instead of the mask of happiness we currently feel is expected, we would be ok with showing our own expression. We might be more comfortable with being authentic.
Being authentic might just lead to lasting, fulfilling relationships. And perhaps we might just be that much closer to true happiness.
Edit: a TED Talk regarding the nature of happiness with Dan Gilbert. Funny that Penelope should include this in her post yesterday when I am writing about this.