Sadness

I happened to talk to one of my friends in the mess regarding sadness. These are his words. " dukhi hone ka bhi apna alag hi mazaa hai. Khushi to ek phuljhadi ki tarah hoti hai jo thodi der main khatam ho jaati hai, par dukh ek agarbatti ki tarah bahut der tak chalta hai" (happiness lasts for a very short time but sadness lasts for a very long time).

A line from Eric Erikson's theory of eight stages of man. " Teething seems to have a prototypal significance and may well be the model for the masochistic tendency to assure cruel comfort by enjoying one's hurt whenever one is unable to prevent a significant loss".

This is what I meant when I said that "people love being Sad "

Below is the explanation of my statement. This explanation is a given by one of my friends in Pune.

Sadness:

One has to understand that brain is a set of chemicals and sparks, nothing else. Love and sadness are just chemicals that get released as stimulants or depressants, which we classify as emotions.

Memory: a neural pathway through which charge flows without effort.

Habit: a neural pathway through which charge flows a few times, it gets strengthened, and then whenever charge flows in the brain, it prefers these circuits. That is why it is difficult to break a habit. It requires a lot of will to build up a new circuit connection. Old habits die hard coz our brain electricity sometimes still takes the old path.

Love: a habit of looking at something or someone, in which a stimulant gets released in the brain when one encounters a habit. (This is the case when one sees a pretty girl, he feels happy, and tries to see her again and again; it is just his mind that is rewarding him with a dope.)

When this dope ends, love ends.

So one can understand why old crushes die hard. Same pathway again, same dopes again. I don't know whether its a depressant or a stimulant, but I suspect that it is a stimulant.

Sadness: a habit that (I have no basis for this, but I hope it would have been proven till now or will be proven soon) releases a depressant in the brain.

Depressants: they slow down the brain.

Stimulants: they fire up the brain.

Alcohol is a depressant, but appears as a stimulant coz it depresses all our inhibition centers, depresses our motor controls. But try studying after consuming alcohol; I don't think u will be able to.

Coffee (caffeine) is a stimulant coz it increases the charge carrying capacity of the neurons.

Smokers smoke and some people don't get the habit, not coz of family values, but because they have a balanced chemical profile in the brain. We don't need a cigarette to fire up or calm down our brains.

Depression is a condition that is usually killed by medicines that counteract the depression rewarding chemicals.

Psychiatry is a field that specializes in such things.

Now, why "People enjoy being sad"?

Sadness can lead to pity:

Self pity: if it is self pity, it can be explained through the chemical thing. You will love to wallow in it, feeling that "see am alone, no one cares about me etc."

Other's pity: then you get attention from others, isn't that great.

Jagjit Singh sings sad songs coz of some personal problems. The reason why people listen to them is that, they can enjoy that vicarious sadness, sadness at some others expense. I will explain how.

He sings about heartbreak or a lost relative. Maybe u have had it, maybe u haven't, but am assuming