Have you ever wondered why we love sad songs or drown in the “Thank You Mom” Olympics commercial? Questions like these have been the impetus for Susan Cain’s new book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Unite Us.
Believing that we experience the deepest states of love, happiness, fear and creativity, writes Ms. Cain, “Bitter sweetness is the secret source of our moonshots, masterpieces, and love stories.” Central to its discovery is the naming and reframing of its titular paradox: there is no bitter without sweet.
Part memoir, part neuroscience, psychology, spirituality, religion, epigenetics, music, poetry, and a look at art, “Bittersweet” advocates “the curiously piercing joy of the beauty of the world,” which is underappreciated within a culture. unrelenting optimism. The book aims to explain the irrepressible lump in our throat of seeing our high school graduate as a grinning toddler.
“Sadness from which compassion stems is a pro-social emotion, a tool of connection and love,” she writes. And this “happiness of melancholy” has a physiological signature and explanation.
Ms. Cain writes that the vagus nerve, which connects the brainstem to the throat and abdomen and is formed by the nerves responsible for digestion, breathing, and heart rate, is also associated with compassion in the face of sadness. , our instinct to protect our youth, and our desire to enjoy.
Ms. Cain aptly notes that the oldest, most instinctive part of our nervous system, which has evolved to have the empathy needed to respond to our underdeveloped newborn babies, is also the site of the very sadness-joy-survival continuum that makes us who we are. human.
Ms. Cain, who is also the author of “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking,” discussed the importance of grief and more in the edited interview below.
What do you want people to understand about being open to or celebrating emotions like sadness and longing?
SC: We better understand that the most fundamental aspect of being human is the longing to live in a more perfect and beautiful world than the one we currently live in. Sometimes this is expressed in overtly religious terms, such as longing for Mecca, Zion, or Eden, or as the Sufis say, which is my favourite, “longing for the beloved.”
But they are also moments when we see a magnificent waterfall or a painting that is beautiful enough to make us cry. It’s a spiritual impulse that we have. It is an expression of that more perfect and beautiful world that we actually see, feel that we have come, and to which we must return.
Tell us a little about the importance of ‘longing’, how it has been misunderstood in modern times and in the context of a culture driven by the ‘tyranny of optimism’.
SC: In our culture, you say the word “longing” and you might think of it as “stuck in longing” or “fucking in longing”, but historically it hasn’t been understood that way. In “Odyssey,” Odysseus was homesick, and that’s what drove him on his journey.
This is what carries you to the divine, to creativity. I don’t believe we have to distinguish between the divine and creativity and compassion and all that. They are all manifestations of the same basic human condition.
If you had published this book before the pandemic, do you think there would have been a different level of uptake?
SC: When I give TED talk How fascinating it was in the summer of 2019 that talking about bittersweet, grief, longing, and bittersweet was seen as an expression of depression as opposed to a clear view of what life is.
The fact that all people should experience it together is one of our deepest sources of sharing and one of our deepest sources of art and beauty. It was very difficult for half of the audience to grasp this at that moment. I think if I was having that speech today, it might have been different.
You make a big distinction between sweet melancholy and depression. How would you describe the difference?
SC: I am melancholic by nature, but I consider myself a happy melancholic. Actually, I’m not depressed in the clinical sense of that term.
It’s really interesting because there’s a long tradition of melancholy and its mysterious virtues going back centuries – over 2,000 years ago Aristotle was asking why so many great poets, philosophers and politicians had a melancholy personality. Melancholy and depression are two different conditions, but often the distinction is not made.
What areas of psychology inhibit this tendency to pathologize melancholy?
SC: The psychologist Dacher Keltner, whom I refer to in the book, did pioneering work on what he calls the “compassion instinct,” and points out that the word “compassion” itself means suffering together. So what you do when you feel compassionate is actually experiencing this sadness of others.
When we think of human nature, we often go either cynically or desperately to the idea of survival of the fittest, but Dr. Keltner also says we really should talk about surviving the fittest, because the only way we as humans can survive is to respond to our babies’ cries. What radiates outward from there is that we respond not only to the cries of our own babies, but also to the cries of other people’s babies, and then generally to other people in distress.
Can listening to bittersweet, small tones of music prepare you for the “bittersweet mentality” and the fragility of life?
SC: Yes, absolutely. In fact, that was the catalyst that got me started on writing this book. Technically I would listen to a sad song, but instead it gave me a sense of unity with other people who knew the sadness the music expresses. And with this incredible feeling of awe and gratitude towards the musician, for being able to articulate that pain is rooted and transforming it into beauty. It’s like my church when I listen to that music. My playlist on Spotifyactually.
What are your “bittersweet” practices?
SC: Meditation is something I practice occasionally, along with mindfulness. But I’m also really interested in exploring experiences that make me feel more connected to a love situation. There is another application that I started to make in the last year after the pandemic.
At the start of the epidemic, I fell into this Twitter-doomscrolling habit. It was the first thing I did when I woke up in the morning. I decided that this was really unhealthy. I was thinking about Mevlana’s poem where he talks about how we wake up empty and scared every morning and instead of going straight to our study we should put down the instrument and let beauty be what you do.
So I decided to start my mornings with beauty. On Twitter, I asked people to recommend their favorite art accounts and I started following them. And now I do not feed full of art. Before I do anything else, I take the time to pair art with a poem I love or an idea I’m thinking about or whatever. It’s a daily practice that I love.