There is a basic principle in bioenergetics that proves that, if you repress sadness, you won’t be able to fully enjoy your happiness either. Our muscles, among other functions, are conductors for emotions, and if you keep them tense to reject bad moments, you’ll have to stand their numbness during the good moments too.
I guess such a piece of evidence has not made it to the top of popular science because it would be extremely uncomfortable for many manufacturers of “happiness in 5 minutes” recipes. There is no easy way out, pain and pleasure are mingled as two parts of a same thing, to the extent that the better you learn to manage pain, the more pleasant your pleasant moments will be.
(In fact, pain is alright, you bet we can take some. The real problem, the thing that won’t let us sleep at night, is fear of pain. Maybe a good issue for a different post).
So no one should disregard one’s own unhappy moments. They should be honored the same as the others, firstly because they are a part of one’s life too, and secondly because there is really no escape from them.
What makes human suffering original is tears. Nobody would feel comfortable weeping all the time ( just like nobody would feel comfortable laughing all the time ), but tears are necessary for mood balance and physiological purposes. Tears are nice, and natural, and one distinctive feature of humans, not shared by other species -excepting crocodiles 
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Do you remember the last time that a film made you cry? Remember that cleaning flood refreshing your breathing system? The exciting shivers in your skin, the relaxation that followed? Films are maybe one of the nicest and “cleanest” ways to reach tears. The same as with a roller-coaster, they imply a psychological mechanism of transference: there is an intended, “faked” emotion that makes us recall the real one very vividly but suppressing its risks; in a ritual, very corporal way, we summon danger so as to remember what was it like, and then tell it to go away: the result is enlarged consciousness, and relief. Crying with a film is a really delicate pleasure.
But maybe crying with films is not enough. I have a feeling that tears in public are badly looked upon (I remember “Alphaville”, a sci-fi film where people got arrested for showing their emotions in public… we haven’t got that far, and I don’t think it can be done). I dream of an ancient time where people were not afraid to cry in front of other humans, just the same as one is not afraid of breathing because it is a simple, natural function, common to all of us. An ancient time of closeness and community, without all those “tele”s and “inter”s that, paradoxically, separate people. Crying, like many other social practices, has now become a solitary, secret event (you would not attend to a ceremony to cry together and pity someone’s bad luck, oh, that’s so primitive… but you do get exactly that collective feeling from a talk-show in the privacy of your hall: you cry by seeing others cry (because we humans are imitative beings), but nobody must know it. Well, pardon me but I don’t get it.
Why are tears so hard to find in our society? Maybe the general environment of everyday horror (3/4 of the world starving to death, a planet heading for a climate collapse, you don’t need the whole list, do you?) makes us a little numb. There is a principle in psychology of attention called the law of fatigue. It’s pretty straightforward: the constant repetition of any stimulus causes a reduction in the response. In other words, our senses get bored with any repetition, including the repetition of atrocity. Sadness and indignation every day, all the time, could kill any normal being. So we change the standards, and decide to pass a lot as “background noise”. We create a defensive crust, the problem is that we lay beneath that crust. Under such condition, tears are sometimes a blessing, and they make you wonder when they come: how long since the last time? And when will this happen again?
So far my sociological interpretation of our problems with tears, with the lack of them to be more precise. There are many other likely theories, so I hope that you, invisible reader who passes by, contribute your two cents here. Yes, I mean you! Come on, don’t be shy, I know you’re there…
Related posts:
Nacho and the primal forces
Vice explained
Playing death
Notions of photography
The whole universe gathers
