In June, Disney released a new Pixar movie called Inside Out about a little girl and her competing emotions. The message of the movie is that negative emotions like sadness and anger have as much of an important place in our lives as happiness and joy and that forcing ourselves to be incessantly optimistic or pretending we're never unhappy isn't healthy or right. Because of this message, one film critic is calling Inside Out "quietly revolutionary" and I couldn't agree more.
In the last several decades, our society has slowly shifted from maturely accepting that life involves experiencing a full range of emotions (including pain, difficulty, frustration and anger) to hyper-pressuring people into pretending everything is always okay, even when it isn't. There is now a huge amount of stress placed on ALWAYS being optimistic and positive and grateful and happy even when we aren't. And, to be perfectly honest, this Stepford approach to life has been creeping me out for quite a while now.
It's not that I don't enjoy being happy and having fun. I like being happy and laughing and having a good time as much as the next person. But I'm a realist who lives in a real world. I have a firm understanding that life isn't always happy or easy or good and consequently it's okay to have negative emotions in response to difficult events and situations. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be frustrated or angry. And even though it's really unpleasant, it's okay to feel lost sometimes. In fact, each person reading this will feel all of these emotions are some point in life.
What's not okay is tritely throwing out platitudes to people like "fake it until you make it" or "you just have to decide to be happy." It's not okay to pathologically insist that others stay perpetually upbeat and optimistic. It's not okay to require others to pretend to be what they aren't just so that the rest of us are more emotionally comfortable....because that is what we're doing. Although there are definitely people in life we want to be happy strictly because we love them and want what's best for them, let's be honest; many times, we're convincing people to fake their feelings so that the rest of us won't feel emotionally inconvenienced. After all, it's uncomfortable to be around emotionally messy things in life. There's some irony to this phenomenon, too. Pressuring others to fake feelings so that we're more comfortable is a selfish thing to do....and selfishness is a negative emotion.
A lot of people will read this and think I'm advocating only negativity or wallowing in unhappiness. I'm really not. There is absolutely a time and place for optimism and positivity and fun. And yes, you should pursue what makes you happy because ultimately, that pursuit will lead you to experience more good than bad. But it's okay if you have times when you don't feel happy. It's okay to have a rotten day. It's normal to go through rotten times. It's okay to feel less than optimistic and positive as a result.
I'm not sure why we've shifted to such an addiction to positivity. I don't know if it's because advances in technology are allowing us to become more and more anonymous and therefore, less connected to one another or maybe somewhere along the way, we've just gotten emotionally lazy. Maybe we've simply stopped teaching people that negative emotions are normal and can be healthy learning tools.
What I do know, though, is that living a realistic and compassionate life requires the acknowledgement that we will feel something less than good at different points in our life....and so will the people around us. Maybe we could cut each other some slack, accept that life is a giant, messy ball of both good and bad and find a way to wean ourselves from needing to only hear good, easy, optimism.
