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Aug. 17, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
28:18
372 Sadness

Why feeling sad is so important

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How's it going? It's Steph.
It's 10 o'clock on the 17th of August 2006 and Christina and I have just...
I'm not walking around in this podcast because we woke up and we went for a long hike and then we played volleyball and then we played badminton and then we went kayaking and then we did Some swimming.
And I can't move.
So I'm just going to do a stationary podcast.
Sorry for the creepy lighting, but it's late.
And so I just wanted to talk about something that was kind of interesting that Christina and I talked about on a hike this morning.
And we actually extended the hike to finish the topic, so I thought I would spend a few minutes and tell you about it.
It's something sort of related to the last podcast that I did, when I was in the car, when I was kind of choked up and so on.
We were talking a bit about how, you know, the philosophy that we like or that we espouse is that emotions are helpful.
They're trying to be positive to enlighten you and to point you in the right direction.
It can be more rational than unconscious mind at times.
And we were chatting about why is that sort of sadness in particular is considered to be something that is...
A negative emotion.
I mean, maybe a little more so for men than for women, but sadness is really considered to be a negative or problematic emotion.
And one of the things that we talked about was how mothers, in particular, seem to have a grave deal of difficulty with accepting sadness within their own children.
So, Christina's mother and my mother, you know, we could talk about fathers, but I personally never knew my father, so, I mean, I knew him, but I never really spent any time around him.
And so I can't really talk about fathers from that standpoint, and maybe it's true for fathers, though it seems to be anecdotally more true for mothers that if you're unhappy, that your mother is the one who wants it to not happen, to go away, to be better, you know, the mothers.
And there's a, somebody posted, um, There was a post on Freedom Man Radio where an email that his mother had sent him was reproduced, and it was all about how mothers will take any kind of sadness away from their children and this, that, and the other. And it does seem to be quite a strong phenomenon within the maternal community to feel uncomfortable around the unhappiness of children.
And so we started talking about what the difference is, say, between, like, why would we have unhappiness?
And what we came up with was that if you think about it, emotions are not designed for the past.
Emotions are designed for the future.
And to take an example, if you stub your toe, Then it's not like you feel pain, but you don't feel pain because you want to go back in time and to unstub your toe because that's already occurred.
You feel pain in your foot to help you avoid stubbing your toe in the future.
So emotions, really, are not about the past but about the future.
So if somebody does something to hurt you, then if you allow yourself to feel that pain as you should, as you really, really should, then You don't feel that pain in order to deal with what has happened in the past, but you primarily are going to feel that pain in order to prevent a recurrence in the future.
So then we were thinking, if that's true, I'm not saying any of this is syllogistically proven as yet.
Yeah, that'll be next podcast, or maybe the one after it.
But if that's true, then the question is, what does sadness do?
Now, We thought about sadness in comparison to anger.
It's two very different sort of emotional states.
And what I thought about was I would get angry at my family when I would want them to change and they wouldn't.
So anger really does seem to be associated...
I'm not saying it's proven because I'm saying it, but this is just sort of what we were working with.
Anger seems to be associated with wanting to change something.
And when you think about it down at the neuropsychological level, we're talking the fight-or-flight mechanism, that anger is a spur to action.
The bear leaps out at you in the woods, you're going to climb a tree, you're going to run away, you're going to fight, you're going to do something.
So when you feel anger, it's because you want to leap into action to change a particular situation.
and that seems to be quite distinct from sadness and the division that we came up with was something like this that you feel angry when you want something to change or in order to give you the energy to change something in a relationship or in your life or something and it's not the only way you can change things but it's an important way of it coming about and you feel sad you feel sad When you recognize that you can't change whatever it is that's in your life that needs to be changed.
So, if you think about, we'll take a stereotypical example, although I know it occurs in the reverse.
If you take an example like an abused woman with an alcoholic husband or a gambling husband or a sleep-around kind of A very promiscuous husband.
Then this woman is going to feel angry at her husband because she's gonna say, I want you to stop drinking.
I want you to stop gambling.
I want you to stop blowing our savings on the ponies.
I want you to stop sleeping around with your floozies.
And anger is her belief, and it probably is an illusion, but her belief that there's something she can do that is going to affect the outcome or affect the other person within the relationship now when she accepts that she can do nothing to change the other person in the relationship then it seems quite likely that she's going to feel a little less angry and a little more sad because that's the mourning process that's the grieving process that goes on once you accept that you can't Change something in any given relationship or any particular relationship.
Then you feel less angry with people and you begin the process of feeling sad.
So anger is the belief or the impetus to change something and sadness is the acceptance that you can't Change certain things, right?
So, some things you have control over, obviously, in life.
You can go and look for a new job, or you can go back to school, or you can go to the gym, and those are things that are just under your control.
When it comes to your relationships with other people, they say that you can't change other people.
But that's not true.
Christina can ask me to change, and it's a fantastic conversation which we have.
I can ask her to change if she's wearing something that doesn't match what I'm wearing, or Her hairstyle is showing up my hairstyle, or something like that.
But, because we respect and love each other, we can ask each other to change, and it's a very open and positive conversation, so we can definitely have that effect on each other.
But, in other relationships that I've had, both romantic and familial, and just about every other kind, change is a very difficult thing, has been a very difficult thing to achieve, if not downright impossible.
So, when I sat down with my mother, and I said to her, when, you know, every time we got together, she'd talk about her hypochondriacal, suing her doctors for making her sick, and this is the paranoid stuff that she goes through, and I said, you know, as nicely as I could,
and I've mentioned this before, so I'll just keep it brief, and I said as nicely as I could, you know, it seems like every time we get together, we talk about your medical issues, your legal issues, and so on, and it's not like I want to stop talking about that completely, It's just that I would like for there to be more in our relationship.
I would like there to be more that we can work on together as a mother and a son, so more that we can chat about and so on.
And she just hit the roof.
And it became very clear to me then that there was going to be no possibility of changing this relationship with my mother.
The same thing occurred with my brother and other In another context and with my father and with certain friends and so on, where I would put forward what it is that I wanted that was different in the relationship, something that I preferred.
And not just, you know, I want you to speak in a Scottish accent or silly things like that, but, you know, real things that I think were not just defensible from a, you know, Steph's preference kind of standpoint, but, you know, better ways to have relationships in general.
And, you know, ran up against the brick wall of other people who refused to change.
Now, if I get angry at that, I'm not saying I didn't, but if I get angry at that, it's because I'm experiencing frustration, and the anger is giving me an impetus to try and change the behavior of the other person.
But the fact of the matter is, if an appeal, if an appeal, using, you know, some sort of objective metric, Some sort of reciprocal, you know, principle that is beneficial.
I mean, what I said to my mom when she started hitting the roof, you know, you're betraying me and you're on the side of the doctors, all this kind of stuff, right, is that it became sort of clear to me at that moment that my mother obviously didn't want to talk about anything other than her own issues, I guess you could say. But, of course, that's not really a very reciprocal principle.
Because if she finds it important to talk about the things that are important to her with me, why would it not also be the case, of course, that I would be able to talk about things that are of interest to me?
Now, it would not really be reciprocal if I were to say, Mom, you've now had 20 years to talk about your issues with your life and so on.
I would now Like to get the next 20 years to talk solely about my issues and my preferences and so on.
That would kind of be reciprocal, but not really mutual, I guess you could say.
But when I sort of asked for more of a mutuality within the relationship, it didn't happen, of course, at all.
Now, she couldn't say, you know, you're being selfish, right?
So this is why I got into all of this sort of noise.
And... When my brother was talking to me about how I was a bad son for not seeing my mother after I broke with her, and I said, well, it's not a relationship that gives me pleasure, right?
It's not a relationship that I enjoy.
In fact, it causes me great stress, heartache, pain, misery.
I think it's having a strongly negative effect on my romantic relationships, and so on, right?
At some point, the woman asks, So, about your mother?
You have to be a Freudian analyst to be asked that question in your life.
And my brother said, well, you know, sometimes we have to do things that we don't like.
Of course, you love that kind of stuff, right?
It's like, really? I've never done my taxes, so maybe I should.
And, of course, I said, well, if that's the principle, then surely other people in the family should follow that as well with regards to me, right?
So, I said, for instance, you know, I'm into a particular kind of philosophy or I would say I'm into a logical kind of philosophy and you have never wanted to talk about it with me voluntarily and so if it is important in relationships for one person or I guess both people to sometimes do things that they don't like tell me why it is that you've never talked to me about this philosophy or every time I bring it up that you find some excuse or a negative way of avoiding it I guess you could say And why is it that you've never read any of my novels,
or poems, or plays, or any of this sort of stuff?
If you're going to bring this principle to bear upon me that I should see mom because you have to sometimes do things you don't like, then help me understand how you live that philosophy.
He's like, well, I don't like seeing mom, and so on.
I'm like, that's fine, but I mean, with regards to me.
And of course, he couldn't come up with anything, and I said, you know, this It seems to me with this family that every time I try and make a decision, people just like throw rules at me.
They just make these rules up and they throw them at me and it's kind of like an assault.
And yet, these aren't rules that other people have lived with in their relationship with me.
And so it feels kind of manipulative.
I'm not saying it is. It feels kind of manipulative.
Like I make a decision and then everybody just makes up these rules that are designed to nullify or be negative towards my decision or get me to retract my decision.
And yet, these are not principles that other people live by.
And surely, I said, with regards to mom, if it is an important principle that we should sometimes do things that we don't like, you know, for the sake of the other person and so on, then shouldn't mom at some points actually ask me about my life from time to time and have some curiosity about it?
Well, mom's not well, blah blah blah blah blah.
I'm like, yeah, I understand that.
But she's well enough to fight for what she wants, right?
I mean, if she was truly crazy, then she wouldn't get angry every time she was crossed, right?
I mean, she's just petulant. That's a lot different from being insane, right?
Insane people can't control their behavior.
When somebody only gets angry when you cross them, then they don't have any biochemical problem with expressing anger, right?
I mean, they're not just uncorked psychologically and have no self-control, right?
They're just manipulative and petty.
And so I said, Mom doesn't pursue this same rule That you say is very important, right?
And when I confronted Mom, which I actually did with my brother present, just because that's when I hit the end of my fuse, I guess you could say, my brother didn't really back me up.
And I said, so you didn't really back me up in this thing with Mom, even though, by your rule, she's much more in violation of this principle than I am, right?
So if the rule is, well, you should show interest in other people's stuff, other people's interests, even when you don't feel like it, Well, for 20 years, Mom's shown virtually no interest in my stuff, whereas we've had countless, countless, countless hours of conversation, well, not even conversation, of listening to her monologues about the hypochondriacal legal stuff and doctor stuff and medical stuff and so on.
Epstein-Barr, run!
So, if this is your principle that you should do things that you don't like, well, Mom obviously doesn't like not talking about this stuff, but you focus very strongly On getting me to change rather than getting the mom to change, though by the rule that you're bringing to bear on me, I'm completely innocent and mom is completely guilty, yet I'm the one that you're trying to change.
Why is that, right? And then he didn't want to talk about that.
And he said, well, you know, he said, let me take a different approach, right?
Which is what people always say when you catch them.
They don't want to be caught.
Oh, let me take a different approach.
But he said, he said, let me take a different approach.
If you don't see mom because of who she is, because you don't like certain aspects of her, then you're actually giving her control about whether you see her or not.
You're completely surrendering your control to her.
And that's not independent, that's not free.
You value freedom stuff, he said, and this is not free.
If you give mom the complete choice about whether you see her or not.
And I said, okay, so if I understand your premise correctly then we should see people that we love because we love them and we should also see people that we hate because we hate them more because they would have control over us if we didn't see them so basically we just see everyone right everyone has a claim to our time no there's no one that we can say no to because if we say Yes,
because we want to. That's a good thing.
And if we want to say no, we can't actually say no, because that's giving them the power over us and stuff like that.
And, of course, he just got resentful and didn't want to talk any further.
And I think that was really the last time that we talked about it.
It was close to the end of our relationship.
Because it became very clear to me that my brother just wanted me to see my mother.
It was just making up rules and throwing in that.
It's like throwing mud at the wall and just seeing what will stick.
It's just making up all these rules.
And then seeing what I would buy.
It's just like randomly creating ads to see if you can get someone to buy a product.
And what I experienced then, once I kind of understood that everybody in my family, and I won't even talk about the stuff that went on with my father because I think you kind of get the pattern, that everyone within my family that I had no capacity to have any voice whatsoever or any preference or any any choice or any effect on the relationship like whatever I said people would just negate it in one way or another and so what I went through then was less anger and more just a peer of real sadness real sadness and some of that was being echoed in the last podcast in 371 I think it was there's real sadness in that once you give up Trying to change people.
Once you recognize that you have a large number of relationships in your life where you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of changing people.
It's you either live with them the way they are, which is usually narcissistic and megalomaniacal and manipulative and destructive and emotionally abusive or ignoring or negative or contemptuous or whatever it is.
You either say, okay, well, I'm going to live with that.
I'm going to try and have this sort of, quote, relationship wherein I Don't get to have any voice whatsoever.
I'm simply there for the convenience of other people.
Once you get that, you have a lot of those relationships in your life, and there's nothing, nothing that you can do to change the other person's behavior.
As one gentleman posted on the board, he was talking with his mom, or sent an email to his mom, and his mom said, hey, look, I'm not going to stop being a Christian, so there's no compromise in that area, and I'm not going to do this, there's no compromise in that area, I'm not going to do this, There's no compromise in the other area.
And, you know, sort of from where I sit, it's like, okay, so if there's no compromise, then why would I be in the relationship?
If there's no back and forth, if there's no negotiation, if there's none of that, then why would I even be in this relationship?
If it's all about you, you don't even need me here.
This is part of the fantasy that we have as children with regards to our parents, or even our siblings, really.
That they'll miss us when we're gone, like if we decide to defoo, as we call it, to stop seeing your family of origin, because, well, for reasons we've talked about before.
There's this great fantasy that they're gonna miss you, you know, but they won't.
You're just a prop. There's no you in their mind to miss.
What they're gonna miss, or I guess what they want, They don't want people saying, oh, how's your son or how's your daughter, and them at some point having to say, uh, well, he's been busy lately.
I mean, they'll do that for a while, but after a while they're going to feel that that's really not a good story to be telling, I guess you could say.
So they'll feel social fears about having to explain your absence, but You, like, you directly, you as a soul, you as an individual, you with your own ideas and thoughts and questions and philosophies and beliefs and virtues and vices, they won't miss you. They don't even know you.
They'll miss you like you got a bunch of crap in the basement and someone takes a deck of playing cards out.
You won't even notice it's gone, and if you ever did, it'd be like, oh, guess I misplaced that.
I mean, there is no you for them to miss.
So, when we were talking this morning about the difference between sadness and anger, and why moms in particular seem so uncomfortable with their children experiencing sadness, it's because I think, or we think, actually I'll say I think, I'm the one doing the podcast, Christine is asleep.
I have this amazing sophophoric ability with her when I'm doing podcasts.
But, um, moms Don't feel very comfortable with children being able to genuinely experience sadness because sadness is how you break free of negative relationships.
Anger doesn't do it.
Frustration doesn't do it.
Rage doesn't do it. Confrontations don't do it.
None of that stuff because all of those things are done with the expectation or the anticipation or the belief, the illusion, that You can do something to change the relationship.
If I get angry enough, if I do this, if I do that.
One gentleman on the board posted the podcast, or was going to post an email, the podcast's mother and girlfriend to his mother to get her to understand something about this, that, or the other, and what I was talking about in the podcast.
And I said, my advice was don't, right, because it's engaging in a conversation.
You're either trying to hurt your mother, which is only going to bind you to her, right, because...
Well, if you try to hurt someone, it's because you want them to change in some sort of like, you know, you hit a, you swat a puppy with a rolled up newspaper because you want the puppy to change, right?
So if you're attacking someone or trying to hurt them, it's because you want them to change.
If you want them to change, you're still in a dialogue, you still have hope, you still have belief that you can have some effect on the relationship, right?
But of course, especially with parents, and you just can't, you can't in a million years.
And even if you could, if you could get your parents to change, What would that mean?
Well, it would mean that they could have changed at any time in the past.
They just didn't. So your needs as a child weren't important, but your bullying as an adult, that's really going to help them change.
Well, of course, it's not the case at all.
A, they won't change, and B, even if they did, you'd actually feel worse, because that meant that they could have changed in the past.
It's just that your dependence and need as a child wasn't enough of a motivation for them.
Your threats or anger as an adult are.
It's not going to happen. Not going to happen.
I mean, they're aware of that paradox as well, and there's no way that's ever going to be allowed to happen.
So I said, you know, don't send this, because it's not going to help you to get out of negative relationships to be angry, because that's all about the belief that change is possible.
If you find the right key, apply the right pressure, find the right sequence of words, find this, Some magical skeleton key is gonna open this door to your parents hearts and blah blah blah blah.
Of course that's taking ownership, but you don't have any.
We're not responsible for how we feel about other people.
That's their job. And it's not your job to figure out your parents.
It's not your job to try and turn them into decent people.
If it's gonna happen, it's never gonna happen from you.
And if it does happen from you, you're just gonna feel even worse, as we mentioned.
So, the reason, I think, The reason that mothers are so uncomfortable with their children feeling sadness is that if the children have the capacity to feel sadness, then they will see the narcissism of the mothers.
It's not all mothers, blah, blah, blah, but, you know, this is just a pretty common phenomenon.
If the children are allowed to feel sadness, the sadness is the antidote to narcissism.
Sadness is the antidote to dead-end relationships.
Anger is the key out of the jail.
Anger is not. Anger which motivates you to confront your parents and this and that, but at some point you've got to just get that they're not going to change.
Once you get that they're not going to change, you're going to start to feel sad.
You're going to get a mourning period.
And that's really true self and fundamental acceptance of the reality of the situation.
Mothers don't want their children to leave them, but they also don't want to confront their own demons, their own narcissism, their own control, manipulative, religious, statist, whatever it is.
They don't want to confront that in themselves.
And we can talk about dads another time, just focusing on the womb-bearers here.
And so they have to oppose the experience of sadness within their own children, because if their children are allowed to experience sadness and encouraged or taught how to accept their own feelings of sadness then they're not going to feel that same desperation to break through for the mothers because they're going to be able to look at their own parents feel sadness and therefore the basic knowledge that their parents won't change won't be something that they have to push to one side because they're not allowed to feel sad because that is the feeling that will produce the greatest sadness perhaps in the world So I hope that this perspective is useful.
I think that difference between anger and sadness is very helpful.
And why, for me, anger at the state, anger at religion and so on, is not such a strong force in me.
I feel sad sometimes about it.
And there are times when I do feel angry.
But the point, I think, is to recognize what you can't change and to mourn.
What is inflicted on you against your will without your choice and in a manner which you can't control.
That requires that you feel, you retain the capacity to feel sadness.
And that means that every time you feel sadness, you've got to welcome it and accept it and try and figure out what it's trying to tell you.
That's sort of what I was trying to demonstrate in 371, which is not knowing what the hell your emotions are trying to tell you, but basically casting about, moving back and forth, thrashing around, beating the bushes, trying to scare out The true self message that's in there.
Sadness is absolutely essential for that.
It is the greatest liberator in the world to have the ability to feel sad and to listen to it and to let it inform you and motivate you and teach you the truth about the relationships that are in your life.
So anyway, I hope you're having a great time.
I'm going to be on vacation for another couple of days but I wanted to get this one down before I forgot it because I think it's quite important and I could actually do a video podcast with Eh, some decent sound, I guess you could say.
So, thank you so much for listening.
I appreciate the donation that I got yesterday.
I'm looking forward to some more donations.
And do come by the board.
And I hope that you're enjoying, I guess, the new tube and the Google video, the stations, and I hope that you're enjoying the visual flair that is Free Domain Radio.
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