#046: Sad > Happy
“Light a candle, instead of cursing the darkness” — Eleanor Roosevelt
The human brain is a magical and mysterious place that we don’t have a full understanding of. In fact, we might only be scratching the surface. As humans have evolved over time there have been many protections that have developed and been built into us physically and psychologically. However, one of these protections that has unfortunate side effects is sadness being a more powerful emotion than happiness. It would be nice to endlessly enjoy the happy times and quickly push aside the sad times, but that isn’t reality. Going back to the hunter-gatherer times (or even earlier), killing an animal for food was a thing to celebrate when protein wasn’t easy to access. Especially knowing that access to this protein is the primary reason that we developed into the dominant species on Earth. But only having a short period of time to feel that joy forced the hunter to stay on the hunt for the next animal for the tribe. Contrarily, the extreme pain over the death of loved one almost forces us to confront these realities and (hopefully) not bury the trauma right away. It is not only that sadness is a more extreme emotion than happiness, but it also lingers and stays with us for longer. This same principle has modern day applications into music, sports and beyond.
People who’s favorite song is happy listen to that song an average of 175 times. People who’s favorite song is sad listen to that song an average of 800 times. This is just one representation of why sadness is a more powerful emotion than happiness. While writing this article, and in a serendipitous moment, I’ve been listening to Allyson Felix – the 7x Olympic gold medal winning track & field star – on The Armchair Expert podcast. She just expressed how her gold medals were such an incredible feeling, but it almost felt more like relief than joy. And at the same time, some of her saddest times in life and darkest moments in the sport came after her losses – even if that meant finishing in 2nd place. If I were to ask you to quickly think of some of the biggest and most impactful moments of your life? I hope that a wedding, the birth of a child or an incredible vacation come to mind. But I expect that the death of a parent or loved one, trauma growing up, the failure of a business or a bad decision sit equal to or higher than the positive ones in your memory.
If you are an artist, but especially if you are a recording artist or songwriter, you have a superpower to take this information and do great things with it. In my daily conversations with creatives, we often joke that it’d be nice if they could write a great song without having to go through something horrible to get there. But great art often must come from great pain. Having the chance to take trauma and use art as therapy for yourself and for a listener/viewer is something magical that most people aren’t able to access. Don’t manufacture sadness and pain or try to overly dwell in that space. Life will throw plenty of sadness at you without you having to look for it. But when those times come, do your best to channel it into productive and positive ways to help yourself get through it and for others to feel less lonely who are going through something similar. Be happy that sadness is such a powerful medium to allow you to deliver your message and turn those lemons into lemonade.
