If You Are Sad and You Know it…

There is a lot going on in the world right now. Russia declared war on Ukraine and is relentlessly bombing the country. Afghanistan is in chaos, Syria has been decimated by wars; there is conflict in Ethiopia, Sudan, and many other countries. In addition to wars, we are entering the third year of a worldwide pandemic. People want it to be over, and in many ways are acting as if it is over, but there are still 1,200 a people per day dying from COVID in the United States alone.

 There is much to cause despair, anguish, sadness, and pain.  Amid all of this there is a strange trend on Facebook; people posting about how it’s important to be grateful in the face of tragedy and not to be “hijacked” by “negative” emotions. This tendency seems particularly pronounced among those who follow a new thought religious tradition or who practice new age spirituality. This scares me. The notion that feeling anything but gratitude and joy is bad is dangerous. The notion that some emotions are negative, and others are good is dangerous. As human beings we can feel a wide range of emotions; it is when we try to suppress our emotions that we run into trouble. People forced to suppress anger, fear, and pain in the name of “positivity” often end up in worse shape. We don’t magically get rid of feelings by not admitting to feeling them or by practicing gratitude.

 Additionally, many of the posts about focusing on gratitude end with some version of the “there but for the grace of God go I.”  This is meant to be a humble expression; however, it is actually demeaning of others and reveals a subtext of assumed superiority. Translated into plain English, the phrase is really saying, “I have God’s grace and you don’t, because if you did have God’s grace you wouldn’t be in that situation.”

 What the focus on positivity and gratitude and the saying there but for the grace of God go I have in common is they leave out compassion entirely. The English word compassion comes from the Latin compati which means “to suffer with.” To be compassionate means that you are willing to suffer with someone else. An insistence that people forego certain emotions is not compassionate, an insistence that you are where you are because of God’s grace, positive thinking, or you possess a higher vibration is not compassionate is sneering disdain for others.

 Here's the funny thing, among all this there is research that shows expressing, anger, doubt, cynicism are helpful, not harmful. Studies have shown that those who suppress anger are more likely to suffer heart attacks. Additionally, those who are relentlessly positive tend to be more gullible and more selfish.

 To be fully human means feeling the whole range of emotions. Denying certain emotions doesn’t make you superior, it makes you less able to relate to others, less able to deal with difficulty, and less able to feel compassion.

 So today, sing out, “If you are sad and you know it, clap your hands. If you are angry and you know it clap your hands. If you are happy and you know it lap your hands.” Feel whatever you feel. Suffer with others and let them suffer with you.