I really like being happy. In fact, it is my life goal to be truly happy. However, I tend to overlook the importance of sadness in achieving happiness. Most, if not all, people do not like being sad, but if we were never sad, we could never be happy either. Our emotions lie on a spectrum ranging from deep sorrow and grief to joy and bliss, but imagine if all negative emotions were removed? All that would be left is happiness, and that would be horrible. Now, I will attempt to explain why this is.
I’ll start with a brief synapsis and interpretation of the final portion of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. John lives in a world in which all people are genetically engineered and strictly contained to a predetermined path in society. Emotions are controlled by a substance referred to as “soma,” which induces a state of hallucinogenic bliss and disillusionment. It seems to be truly ubiquitous, as all people use it and are exposed to it as a substitute for negative emotions. John comes from a “savage reserve,” which contains people who were born naturally and live in a technologically more basic society from the outside world. He leaves the reserve and takes the world by storm. After observing how the “brave new world” around him operates, he is appalled at the apparent lack of humanity. Although he lusts after a woman, Lenina Crowne, he refuses to be with her so as not to contribute to the superficial nature of the world he observes. After attempting and essentially failing to find any scrap of genuine, natural human emotion, John hangs himself, symbolizing the death of true humanity in a superficial world. The ending quote from the novel remains one of the most powerful conclusions I have read:
“Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east. …”
I interpret John’s death as a reminder that emotional contrast is essential to living a meaningful life. Most of the characters in Brave New World cope with negative emotions by merely using “soma” to forget their problems. Thus everyone lives in a perpetual state of artificial happiness. John is unable to cope with artificial happiness because he realizes that it is meaningless. If we are not sad ever, how can we be truly happy? People who experience only good things have no negative experiences with which to compare them. Therefore, their “happiness” becomes the normal, median emotion, which is synonymous to apathy, essentially. The more sorrow we feel, the greater capacity we have for feeling joy.
Here lies the brutal reality of life: We must go through heartbreak, grief, and disappointment if we want to feel positive emotions to the same degree. It is up to us to find a healthy medium between our emotions. We certainly do not want to be sad enough to the point of depression or suicide, but we really shouldn’t discount our tough experiences in life as pointless. The point of negativity is to make way for positivity. Tell me what you think!
