Sadness

Whether you’re feeling sad because you miss somebody, your dream failed, you’ve got an unrequited love, or you simply have woken up at the wrong side of the bed: everyone feels sad once in a while.

Yet we express our feelings of sadness significantly less often than feelings of happiness — as if we think sadness should be solved, hidden or ignored.

As the idea prevails that happiness is a choice, we don’t want to waste a minute of our time being sad. We’re reading convulsively all the self-help advice in the magazines, throw ourselves on our work, or go to a party with or without some drugs at hand. And, if we eventually can’t handle it any longer, we hide ourselves in bed.

We seem to forget that life is a rhythm of ascendance and bust. A rhythm that isn’t reflected in society. Whereas happiness is an emotion shared en masse, sadness seems an emotion kept secret, experienced at best individually and in isolation.

Where can you go to let go together? To have a good cry instead of a party? To feel that you’re not the only one?

There is a taboo on sadness. A harmful taboo that leads to depression and loneliness. A taboo that should be broken in order to acknowledge that sadness is a part of life.