As I sit here watching the finale of Gravity Falls for the billionth time, and pour the majority of my body’s water content out of my tear ducts, there is something that occurs to me, the age-old question that I’m sure has crossed all of our minds at some point or another: Why do we watch/read/listen to things that make us sad?
It is no mystery why we delve into the world of fiction in the form of books or films in search of happier tomorrows. Sometimes we need an escape from real-world troubles and to believe that all stories can have a happy ending. However, that is not always the case. There are also times where we need an ending that shows us bad things can happen to good people and that the world is not always filled with sunshine. Sometimes that sun gets obscured by rainclouds.
It’s not all bad news and gloom however. Those rainclouds can wash the world in life-giving water that renews the earth and brings flowers up from mire and mud. In this same way, like those raindrops, the tears that fall from our eyes at sad plot twists, unrequited loves, and coming-of-age stories where the ending is sometimes not about eternal youth but rather about growing up, can sometimes wash away the real sadness we feel and leave us feeling revitalized. It is no secret that sometimes a good solid cry is all you need to feel better, at least for a little bit. It can empty your heart of all that bad feeling and clear your eyes as well as your mind to make room for self-reflection and healing.
Fictional sadness, though it can have a real-world counterpart, is often far easier to tackle than the sadness that exists in our day-to-day actual lives. A tragic book can be closed, a sappy movie turned off, and a sad song can be paused. It is this control that we have over how we experience these made-up sadnesses that gives us the strength to tackle our real-world sorrows. We become stronger in knowing that these characters we encounter on the page or on the screen or in these notes are capable of feeling crushing defeats and moving forward, which in turn shows us we can do the same. This is the purpose of media, after all: to show us what we can overcome and what we can be as a result of those triumphs. A happy ending is all well and good, but people rarely learn the tough lessons in life from “Happily Ever Afters.” It is the stories about struggle and loss that show us what we can really take and what we can come back from, and the real victories of which we are capable.
All in all, it’s certainly better to cry your feelings out than to bottle them up. We may shed a few tears—alright, a gallon of tears—at these fictional sorrows, but in the end, we are better for it.
