The Kind of Happiness We Should Be Sad About

Given how hard it is to be happy, it seems churlish and mean to say of anyone that they might be happy ‘in the wrong way’; to start – in a very troubled world – to discriminate between forms of happiness, to relegate some to lesser status and to say, underneath our breath, that a few might even be secret varieties of unhappiness. Yet there may be forms of ‘toxic positivity’ that deserve closer scrutiny.

But if we’re to honour the genuine and highest forms of contentment and foster conditions of authentic flourishing, we may have to bring a degree of scepticism to bear on certain of our buoyant states, interpreting these as subterfuges that threaten eventually to exhaust and degrade us.

We may have to admit that there are times when our happiness is accompanied by overzealous attempts to keep it aloft; when we are running too assiduously away from something important but unbearable, which worries and saddens us just outside of our field of vision.

The Flight from Sadness

We might define this condition as ‘manic happiness’ – to be distinguished from its more expansive and relaxed siblings.

In a manic, happy phase, we laugh at everything, we are never without a phone, music or company, and we take care not to leave any gaps in our schedule; silence and solitude become threats. We are addicts, defined as people who keep themselves away from themselves – rather than as people who are physically dependent on any particular substance. It isn’t just heroin and cocaine that can be classed as drugs; there is also food, TV shows, newspapers, exercise, charity work, children, gardening and politics. The most ostensibly innocuous and healthy pastimes can be recruited to the task of self-alienation.

What is it that we might be in flight from? Always, bluntly put, pain. There is a thought that we haven’t thought and a feeling we haven’t felt. Something about our childhood, an old relationship, a problem at work, a mother or father, or an accident in our past.

Toxic Positivity and Self-Alienation

A fundamental flaw of our minds is that they may not have the energy and courage to deal with their own contents; they are driven to keep secrets from themselves. They know and don’t know simultaneously, and pay a price for their ignorance in the form of bodily symptoms and mental anxieties.

But lies are never secure. The truth will out. Deferred pain can’t be entirely driven underground. The unthought thought begs to be heard and will force its way through willy-nilly, even if it comes out in the form of facial twitching or a breakdown.

We can start to unwind manic happiness with a simple-sounding question. Away from the chatter and busyness, we should ask: If I couldn’t be happy, what might I need to be sad about? Or: If I had to have a sad thought now, what might it be about?

Learning to Stand Still

It might be Mum or Dad, our ex or an old friend. The answer will be there – waiting for us. We must reassure our minds that they have the strength to bear what is already inside them. The reckoning doesn’t have to destroy us. We can spend a day or a year crying if we need to. Running away is a great deal more dangerous than standing still.

The best thing we can do with our sadness is simply to own up to its existence. Our minds know it anyway; they are suffering whatever we do. We might as well do the real crying now rather than delay and go through all the symptoms of denial. The only way to be happy may be to first allow ourselves to be, for a time, profoundly unhappy. In this sense, the opposite of toxic positivity may not be despair, but the courage to face sorrow honestly.