Glass Half Empty or Half Full

    Glass half empty or half full?

    24 Feb

    By

    Back in May 2024, my colleague Mark wrote a very enjoyable thought piece “Why do we like listening to sad music?”

    (find it in this section).

    I’ve been thinking about this topic ever since, as I’ve noticed that many music-loving friends and clients spend a lot of time listening to music that one could perhaps characterise as ‘sad’.

    Furthermore, I’ve just been through a phase of immersion in Nick Cave, Radiohead, Puccini ‘Sono andati?’, Purcell’s ‘When I Am Laid In Earth’ and various requiem pieces. Despite the melancholic nature of this music, I felt positive afterwards, peaceful even.

    Was it because of audiophilia nervosa and misophonia as Mark suggests?

    Maybe, but I wonder if there’s also something broader that affects the human species on a whole that may be contributing.

    I’ve observed that we (humans as a collective), tend to consider the negative thoughts that cross our mind, the thoughts that create anxiety within us, the thoughts that keep us awake in the middle of the night when we’re a down in the dumps…we consider those thoughts to be TRUER or more REAL than the thoughts we experience when life seems beautiful, successful, favourable, open and auspicious.

    It’s as though we’re convinced that our moments of confidence and happiness are illusions…that suffering and worry are more true.

    Do you believe that joy is stronger than grief?

    Do you believe that on balance, the power of bliss & elation overcomes the effect of grief & despair?

    Mark apologetically referenced Nietzche. In the spirit of consistency, I would like to do the same.

    “Joy is deeper still than grief can be” is a line from Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical work ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, where the speaker, Zarathustra, is expressing the idea that true, profound joy can reach depths even greater than the depths of sorrow or grief…essentially suggesting that the capacity for deep happiness can be even more powerful than the capacity for pain.

    I ask nothing better than to believe it, but at a deeper level, in the depths that make us what we are and over which we have no control, I feel that sadness may know more about life than joy does.

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