Without Sadness, There Would Be No Joy

Without Sadness, There Would Be No Joy (A lesson from Pixar’s Inside Out)

 

 

While I will not divulge a spoilage alert with the most recent Pixar film just released, Inside Out, the cartoon reminds viewers of a significant truth. Life inevitably involves grief, disappointment, discouragement, depression, and sadness. Those are certainly some recent feelings that touched my heart, where joy and therefore happiness seemed remote. Let’s just say – I am not in a place I would prefer to be with constant reminders of stagnancy, confident I am capable of so much more than an ordinary, monotonous routine. Some individuals on this Texan island seem okay with complacency in a routine of boredom….something I cannot settle for.
The reality before us is that joy cannot exist without its counterpart, sadness. We would not know what true joy is without our own down points of the blues. Sadness gives humans the necessary understanding of what it feels like to be happy. Each emotion cannot exist without the other. How many times have you cried, exhibiting the emotion of sadness, only to realize you feel better after the tears flowed? The sadness, in this instance, led to a brief feeling of happiness and relief to follow, with a deep breathe.
The movie, Inside Out, illustrates the tale of practiced human emotions that operate as characters within the mind of an eleven-year-old young girl, who first plays a child in the plot line, named Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias).  Each feeling engages the expression through a central tower in our brain, shaped like the Seattle Space Needle, each emotion that fictionally plays the given character role. Sadness is Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith). Joy is Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler). Anger is Anger (voiced by Lewis Black). Disgust is Disgust (voiced by Mindy Kaling), for example when Riley sees broccoli and refuses to eat it, until her parents play airplane. And so on, and so forth, with other relevant characters who each portray the relevant given sensation.
The other characters look up to Joy to keep Riley positive, with smiles moving forward. Life circumstances change, and as humans experience, Joy cannot always play the main role in our lives. Sadness becomes key to exploring and understanding happiness, so that realistically we are sad at times.
In other words, the down times make humans further appreciate the good times with true gratefulness. Without divulging more of the movie’s insights into the human psychology, I recommend seeing it to be reminded of the lesson that strikes obvious for all of us – the role that emotions play in our life journey.
Sometimes we must be sad before we can be happy…before we become Joy. We all want to play the character of Joy and understandably so. However, sometimes Sadness becomes the hero when our own sadness leads to the happiness we have long been seeking to feel.
And simply said, sadness often leads to our eventual greatest moments of happiness. If you feel sad, please believe Joy will eventually arrive just around the corner. Depression realizes defeat in the awakening of a new dawn.
As teammates, rather than contradictory forces against each other, the emotional characters, both Joy and Sadness interact to shape our personalities as they are. Joy cannot exist without Sadness and Sadness cannot exist without Joy. Both emotions together lead to happiness.
The two following clips definitely illustrate the humorous difference in personalities between the Inside Out characters of Joy and Sadness. Smile and enjoy.