I’ve all the time been fairly emotional, simply moved to tears by every thing from a tragic music to a marriage to the fantastic thing about a fall sundown to a predictable romantic comedy. I used to suppose this was an issue and was embarrassed by my tears—I even went to remedy to attempt to “cease crying a lot.”
However in keeping with Susan Cain’s new e book, Bittersweet, this tendency to be simply moved is a energy that helps gasoline deeper relationships, artistic pondering, and self-understanding. Cain, creator of Quiet, a well-liked e book concerning the energy of introversion, has written a poetic, philosophical e book—with some science thrown in—about how embracing our darker feelings and yearnings can profit us, making our lives fuller and extra significant.
Based on Cain, the “bittersweet” emotions contain “an inclination to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute consciousness of the passing of time; and a curious piercing pleasure at the fantastic thing about the world.” They contain the popularity that mild and darkness, life and dying, are perpetually paired, and that residing with that dichotomy entrance and middle can deliver us psychological richness.
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“Bittersweetness is . . . a quiet drive, a manner of being, a storied custom—as dramatically missed as it’s brimming with human potential,” writes Cain. “To totally inhabit these dualities—the darkish in addition to the sunshine—is, paradoxically, the one strategy to transcend them.”
The ability of bittersweet emotions
As Cain explains, we Individuals are sometimes discouraged from feeling darker emotions, like melancholy or grief, in favor of presenting a stoic or smiley face to the general public. That is problematic, says Cain, as combined feelings are necessary for our mental health and denying them could make us really feel inauthentic. In the meantime, pursuing happiness in any respect prices can backfire, making us extra depressing.
How can tuning into sorrow assist? For one factor, it deepens our connections to different folks and will increase our sense of frequent humanity. Cain factors to the film Inside Out and its celebration of the ability of unhappiness, and to Dacher Keltner’s analysis on the “compassionate intuition”—the way in which we’re hardwired to care about others who’re in ache. Whereas being joyful actually has social advantages, being in a low temper does, too: It may well make us more empathic towards others and draw others to us.
“If we may honor unhappiness slightly extra, perhaps we may see it—moderately than enforced smiles and righteous outrage—because the bridge we have to join with one another,” writes Cain.
After all, admitting to ache and sharing vulnerability let others know we’re human, too, and so they assist us keep humble in relationships. Cain means that we acknowledge our bittersweet feelings as a craving for excellent, unconditional love, the place we’re seen and appreciated simply as we’re. This longing can by no means be fulfilled, not even in romantic partnerships. If we maintain on to that reality, and easily acknowledge that the longing will all the time be there, we could blame our romantic companions much less and cease holding them to unrealistic requirements.
Embracing our bittersweet facet can even inspire us towards pursuing troublesome targets, she says. Bittersweet emotions create momentum for change and assist us discover our goal, as a result of they level us towards interior truths about our lives and what issues most to us. If we lean into our sense of longing and sorrow, says Cain, we will higher assess what’s fallacious with our present lives and entry our deepest passions.
It’s why individuals who undergo traumatic occasions can typically develop from their ache and use it to advertise good, just like the mom who misplaced her little one to a drunk driver and shaped the nonprofit Moms In opposition to Drunk Driving. It’s additionally why an expressive writing observe, the place folks study their troublesome emotions to glean that means from them, might be so useful for transferring on from adversity. Not shrinking from sorrow can assist us develop.
Cain devotes a big a part of the e book to creating the connection between longing or melancholy and the motivation to create or admire artwork. Certainly, some analysis has proven a tie between experiencing difficult or mixed feelings and creativity. Maybe that’s why many artistic varieties are famously morose—suppose Leonard Cohen or Sylvia Plath. They flip their sorrow and longing into one thing stunning, transferring us all.
Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole (Crown, 2022, 352 pages)
Even at work, argues Cain, people who find themselves given free rein to cease placing on a cheerful face and, as a substitute, to confess errors, share private sorrows, and categorical their yearnings are happier, more healthy, and extra productive than those that attempt to seem sunny and infallible. Partly, being extra genuine about our feelings builds belief and improves work relationships.
“Sharing troubles flip[s] out to be superb not just for psychological well being, but in addition for enterprise,” writes Cain.
One other taste of bittersweet emotions, recognizing impermanence, brings the fantastic thing about the world into stark reduction for us, says Cain. Transcendent experiences—feeling a way of marvel, frequent humanity, and part of one thing larger than your self—are among the many most bittersweet, significant experiences in life and may truly lead to larger vanity, sort conduct, larger life satisfaction, and fewer melancholy.
A bittersweet life?
All of this doesn’t imply we must always want to endure or wallow within the limitations of our mortal lives, as if that’s a shortcut to artistic genius or transcendence. That will simply result in melancholy. As an alternative, we have to permit sorrow and ache to coexist with moments of pleasure or connection and never push it away, says Cain.
“What we like are unhappy and exquisite issues—the bitter along with the candy,” writes Cain. “We like artwork kinds that categorical our eager for union, and for a extra excellent and exquisite world.”
After all, there are arguments towards giving in to ache and longing, and Cain spends a while uncovering counterarguments to her thesis. For instance, she notes that Buddhist philosophy admonishes us to eschew longing, because it interferes with equanimity and accepting our current expertise. She additionally attends a convention of people that suppose accepting mortality is wrongheaded and that we must be busy discovering methods to increase our lives indefinitely, serving to take away the bitter tablet of dying.
Whereas I could quibble some with Cain’s use of analysis findings—which appeared to focus extra on the upsides of detrimental feelings than the advantages of combined emotions, downplaying the happiness facet of the equation—I do suppose she makes a superb case for not turning away from darker impulses too rapidly. As I’ve gotten older, the truth that dying is extra imminent has positively made me take inventory of my life and added poignancy to the time I’ve left. It’s why I began a day by day mountain climbing observe and fulfilled outdated goals of touring overseas. These actions have deep that means for me, as they’ve enhanced my love of nature, tradition, and language and strengthened my dedication to conservation efforts—all necessary for my well-being.
Although I wouldn’t say Cain’s e book modified my pondering, precisely, it did reinforce it. By embracing the bitter with the candy, I discover that my relationships are deeper, my creativity extra accessible, my capability for compassion stronger, and my life richer. Maybe, studying her e book provides you with permission to discover your personal bittersweet facet—and reap the advantages.
