Happiness isn’t Always Essential

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Many people spend their lives chasing happiness.

Annabel Galvan, Staff Writer

Some may believe that happiness is the key to life. Although being happy all of the time can positively change your life, emotions we consider negative or unhealthy have a greater positive impact on us entirely. We as humans tend to have the wrong idea of our emotions because in actuality these negative emotions are crucial to our existence and happiness.

According to Matthew Hutson’s article in Psychology Today, “Beyond Happiness, The Upside of Feeling Down,” emotions are very rational; they’re the means to help us achieve goals that are important to us.  In other words, our emotions help us identify what is going on around us as well as help suggest methods of improvement or repair. Emotions such as guilt, shame, and embarrassment make us self-analyze what led up to these emotions arising. These emotions motivate us to make amends and try and fix what is damaged.

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We see this ongoing cycle in many other emotions such as anger and fear, in which the emotion itself helps us fix and analyze the problem to help flip the situation into a positive one.

Anger can motivate us to get up and take action, which leads to a boost in self-confidence, optimism, and risk-taking.

Many emotions, such as fear and anxiety, may help us through numerous life-threatening situations. For example, these emotions act as our defenders and help heighten our awareness. Without these two, we’d become uncritical thinkers which could get us into life-threatening situations.

Sadness and grief can lead to positive change as well, such as reduced forgetfulness and gullibility within ourselves. It can also lead to more rational thinking and increased politeness and fairness. These emotions give us the feeling to make something positive come from senseless losses. Believe it or not, accepting sad negative emotions can ironically lower depression. 

We rarely question feeling good and often distance ourselves from negative emotions because we as humans believe it’s making us happier or benefiting us, but in reality, it’s ruining our growth and day to day functioning.

Whenever the next time you experience one of these negative emotions, always welcome it with open arms and allow yourself to grow and change for the better.