Don't over-rate Happiness. Don't avoid Sadness!

Raju Korti
To all those oblivious of the social media algorithm of  someone like me generating ideas from what good friends write, this blog is one. My US-based friend Vinod Sujan is a food for thought and always packs a robust wisdom punch in his posts. This one particularly appealed to me:
"The amount of energy, love and happiness you are willing to trade to acquire wealth is the cost of wealth. The idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness is a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in our society which is fear of sadness. Are we teaching our kids that happiness is the default position? Isn't wholeness what we ought to be striving for? And part of wholeness is sadness and disappointment, frustration and failure; happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don't teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say, 'Quick! Move on! Cheer Up!" 

As someone whose life has been a proved and corroborated template of sadness, happiness has been a rather alien and a tangential feeling. One song from the 1964 film Dosti sums it up for me. It makes a virtue of sadness:
Raahi manwa dukh ki chinta kyun sataati hai, dukh to apna saathi hai
Sukh hai ek chhaon dhalti, aati hai, jaati hai, dukh to apna saathi hai.
Dukh ho koyi tab jalte hain path ke deep nigaaho me...   

Conventional wisdom says happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin but life can be lopsided in all its bias. I have always been like a captain who loses the toss, and therefore the plot, most of the times. Happiness and sadness are two emotions often conceptualized as being diametrically opposite ends of the same continuum. In my naivette, happiness is simply the absence of sadness and vice versa, and it has been more of an exception than a rule that the two have been separate, independent emotions that can co-exist in a person's emotional seasoning as research puts it.

I have been reading a lot on the issue but the more I delve, the more I discern that there is a desperate attempt on the part of many to institutionalize happiness as a default position, a thought that Vinodbhai puts across so evocatively. Happiness and sadness are measured and evaluated across a spectrum of parameters but the human compass seems to veer around to happiness as a course correction, no matter what or from where your sadness stems. We are programmed to think that way, and as Vinodbhai says, it is a dangerous idea.

As someone who has grown up to be a sad person -- and even more sadly, being a cynical that obtains from my profession -- sadness has helped me acknowledge and process my emotions. I am no philosopher, nor do believe that I have the power to preside over other people's destiny, but in my considered limited wisdom, this is something that many people consciously avoid. You supress sadness at your own peril -- that of building emotional resilience and developing empathy and compassion. Sadness and happiness should at best be only lost-and-found brothers. Having said that, sadness is not a disease to be cured of, nor is a happiness a gift.

Do not over-rate happiness. Let sadness give your persona that much needed balance. I will quote another song lyrics to buttress this:
Na milta gham to barbaadi ke afsaane kahaan jaate
Agar duniya chaman hoti to veeraane kahaan jaate.

So all those who believe that happiness is a choice and sadness is not a preference, take some heart, if not inspiration from the sadness that I perennially wallow in.