There have been recent experiments in psychology that support the notion that sadness has value. Namely that we see and remember things with greater clarity and precision.
I heard this on a Margaret Throsby interview. With the popularity of Positive psychology, some researchers wondered if there was a point to being sad. There seems to be evidence that says that in evolutionary terms, sadness is important.
Sadness lets us take a new look at things around us as we don’t feel safe enough to trust the way things are at the moment and we will sharpen up our mindfulness in order to navigate through possible threat and danger.
Happiness, on the other hand, tells us that our world is safe and we can trust in the ways things are. And so we don’t pay attention nearly as much and are more likely to operate on automatic, possibly missing something important.
In broad terms, sadness helps us change direction while happiness will help us to follow our routines.
The researchers are not talking about depression here, but simple common place sadness over the usual staff that comes and goes. Life really.
The researchers found people while a little sad, had better memories of what was going on around them, than did happy people.
All of this comes as a surprise to me. I always thought that being happy was the all in all, and now I’m finding that other moods are perfectly fine and that all of them have value.
So there it is. Moods and emotions. All good as far as I can tell. Perhaps as long as there are ups and downs and you don’t get stuck in only one kind of mood, things are as they should.
Paul
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