Bestselling author Susan Cain explains why it’s important to savor your sadness.
We live in a culture that gives bear hugs to happy thoughts and turns its back on negative ones. (Just think about all those home-décor signs emblazoned with “Good vibes only” or “Don’t worry, be happy!”) It isn’t always easy to live in a world where being cheerful means you’re successful, while being sad is something to keep to yourself, and diligently work your way out of. Yes, melancholy can make us feel hopeless, unmotivated, and drained of energy. But it can also teach us hidden lessons, help us connect with others, and guide us down a new (more enlightened) path.
In her new book Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, bestselling author Susan Cain explores the hidden advantages of sadness we can all savor — not just for our benefit, but for others around us.
The book was inspired by a moment when Cain was in law school: Her peers asked her why she was always listening to “funeral music.” (She’s a big fan of Leonard Cohen.) “I’d been asking what it was about bittersweet music that seemed so transcendent to me,” says Cain. “How can something that was simultaneously happy and sad have the power to elicit such strong, positive emotions in me?”
Below, Cain shares why she believes the optimal state of mind is one of vulnerability and gloom, how we can use our sadness as a catalyst for creativity, and more.
KCM: Why do we tend to find comfort watching heartbreaking films, or feel calmer listening to sad songs?
Susan Cain: We live in a culture that’s telling us to be relentlessly positive all the time. Everybody’s walking along, getting their groceries, containing their multitudes of joys and heartbreaks. But you can’t really talk about the heartbreak side of the equation. And then an artist comes along and has the courage to put raw feelings into a movie or song, and we’re like, “Oh my gosh, yes. That’s the truth.” You feel momentary self-transcendence when you feel connected to a greater whole and understand that you’re not alone in your human experience.
There’s a saying, “Smile and (half) the world smiles with you; frown and you frown alone.” But you believe being melancholic about life actually has benefits. What are they?
There are three real benefits: creativity, connection, and transcendence. For creativity, we know from numerous studies that understanding we’re part of a world of impermanence — a world of simultaneous beauty and brokenness — is a catalyst to creativity.
The second benefit is the ability to connect with other people, which is evolutionarily bred into us. We know that the biggest bundle of nerves in our body is called the vagus nerve. When we see somebody else in distress, our vagus nerve becomes activated — it’s an almost pre-conscious desire to connect with that person, bond with them, and attend to their distress. It’s the opposite of that “frown and you frown alone” saying. And the amazing thing about the vagus nerve is it’s evolutionarily ancient — it regulates our power to breathe and to digest. It’s really basic and fundamental to who we are.
So we’re biologically wired to connect over suffering?
Yes. And I’m not saying that happiness isn’t great and that we don’t also connect through a great night out when everyone’s dancing together and happy. That’s also a source of connection, but there’s this deep source of connection that comes through sharing our difficult moments.
How can feeling down lead us to transcendence?
All of our religions have been teaching this to us from the very beginning. The heart of all religions is the longing for a more perfect and beautiful world than the one that we’re in. Religiously, that’s expressed through the Garden of Eden, or the longing for Mecca or Zion. But we also have secular expressions of it, like longing for “somewhere over the rainbow” from the Wizard of Oz. What is that? It’s giving voice to this deep human desire for a different and better world. And that longing is what propels us forward to create new and better forms.
What’s the power in longing for moments we can’t get back — like a first love, or a career opportunity we passed up and now regret?
What we’re longing for when we do that is our best selves, or that which is best in humanity. And if we tune into our own particular longings, they have a way of revealing to us the path that we should be following.
In Bittersweet, I tell the story of an obsessive love affair I fell into when I was in my thirties. I had left a career as a corporate lawyer and wasn’t sure what came next. It was a very unsettling life transition. But I fell into this obsessive relationship and I couldn’t extricate myself from it until a friend said, “If you’re this obsessed with somebody, it’s because they represent something that you’re longing for. So what is this person representing? What are you longing for?” I realized that this person who I’d fallen obsessively in love with was a musician and a lyricist. I’d been in this world of corporate law for 10 years that I didn’t belong in. I always wanted to be a writer and I realized this person represented to me that world and the practice of writing I’d longed for my whole life. As soon as I understood that, the obsession lost its hold on me, and I started actually writing. It can be a really helpful practice to help you figure things out.
How can you tune into those deeper revelations?
Talking to a friend who you can be open and honest with is very helpful. Another practice is expressive writing, which is the practice of sitting down every morning and writing whatever you’re deeply feeling. You’re not writing with the idea of producing beautifully crafted prose. You’re spilling everything out and maybe even tearing it up two minutes later — it doesn’t matter if you keep it or not.
We know that the act of writing down or articulating what you’re really feeling in and of itself is transformative, and it literally improves our health and can make us more successful at work. Don’t be afraid of those feelings when they come up. Instead, really investigate them and figure out what they’re trying to tell you.
What’s the beauty in longing for “somewhere over the rainbow” if it’s impossible to reach?
We aren’t going to get to that world, and that’s okay. The best that humanity has to offer here in this world is bound up in that longing. And although we’re never going to fully reach that which we long for, it’s going to bring us closer.
That’s also the message in many of our religions. If you look at the Sufi poetry of Rumi from the 12th century, all of it is saying, “longing is that which carries you closer,” “the hunger is the cure,” and “be thirsty.” It’s an understanding that the act of longing carries you that much closer to love itself.
