What Can You Learn from Sadness
Transcriber: Emanuele Carlini
Reviewer: David DeRuwe
A few years ago, I was lying
on the floor of my shower crying,
My chest ached.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
I was glued to the floor.
To be honest, I knew this moment
would happen eventually.
I knew this feeling would come back.
You see, once a month, my sadness
would come in and knock on my door.
Usually, I could tell it,
“Not now, I’m busy,”
or “Could we like reschedule?”
(Laughter)
But this time, my attempts were futile,
for this sadness felt different.
It demanded to be felt.
It felt like as if a man
was putting me down
and asking me, “Tintin,
what are you doing with your life?”
But what if I told you that this
was a pivotal moment in my life?
That … the sadness that I had to feel
was necessary for me to make some changes,
just as it is necessary
for you to feel it so you can too.
I wouldn’t have believed you, believe me.
But before we begin, what is sadness?
Now, according to “EC
Psychology and Psychiatry,”
sadness is a basic and natural emotion,
one that actually is for interactional
and adaptive purposes.
We usually feel it when
we’ve been hurt or something is wrong.
We usually associate it
with tears, frowning, and even fatigue.
We can also realize
that it can be a wake-up call
to really look at how
we’re living our lives
What would happen
if we were open to our sadness,
just as we are about happiness?
What if I told you that listening to it
could actually have its benefits?
What if instead of pushing it away,
we took the time to hear
what it had to say?
You see, listening
to sadness is a process.
It looks very different for everyone.
Some people know how to intuitively do it,
but for me, I had to go to therapy
to learn how to do it.
But how do you listen to it?
My therapist told me,
“Well, let’s figure it out.”
She showed me that, actually,
I had to first close my eyes
and then locate where I felt
any heaviness in my body.
For me, it was usually
in my chest or my abdomen.
And my chest just felt
like someone was sitting on me
and my abdomen felt the same way it does
when I eat too much cheese.
(Laughter)
Then, I would breathe into it
and see what my sadness would reveal.
At this time, my sadness
knew that I needed to have
a conversation with it.
It knew I needed to look at my life:
How I was living it? Who was I with?
because I needed to look upon me
to change how I was feeling.
You see, for many years of my life
I thought you could only be [one of two]
things, either an artist or a doctor.
Never both.
That decision, of becoming a doctor -
I don’t know if it was the amount of years
I had to study to become one
or because of the amount of hours
I needed to dedicate to be one,
I had left a part of me
that gave me happiness,
that gave me wonder.
This revelation, this introspection
was necessary for me to be who I am today.
For just like happiness,
there are benefits to being sad.
There are a lot of studies done
by the psychologist Joseph Forgas,
especially one called
“Don’t Worry, Be Sad!”
that he talks about how sadness
actually can motivate us,
can change the way we perceive things,
and can actually make us be more grateful
for what we already have.
And another study,
done by Indiana University,
on how American football players cried,
saw that those who were more open
to sadness and more open to cry
actually had higher levels of self-esteem
than those who did not.
All in all, we have to, though,
by knowing the sadness,
this temporary sadness is necessary
and can it have its benefits.
We must make this distinction
that it is temporary.
So what happens
when it becomes dysfunctional?
What if it becomes persistent?
It becomes depression.
Depression can look
very different for everyone.
It can change your eating habits;
it can change your sleeping habits.
It can make you want to isolate yourself;
It can make you not find your wonder.
But I ask you,
what would happen if you had
a positive interaction with your sadness?
If you were as open to it
than you were by your happiness?
If you took the time to listen to it?
I realized I didn’t just need it
to be a doctor - I could be both.
I could create mental health awareness
in a way a larger population
could understand.
I could use art as a medium
to talk about these abstract concepts
that on paper are very
difficult to talk about.
I created with photography a mental health
exhibition, with a few of my friends,
and talked about different
mental health disorders,
such as depression,
anxiety, schizophrenia,
and people said anonymously their stories.
The space was created
so we could talk openly
without the stigma about what we all face
in some way, shape, or form,
either healthy or unhealthy.
Through writing,
I was able to find an illustrator
and create a children’s book
because if we have PE,
I think we should also have ME,
a mental education.
We should be able to have
that conversation with our children
about what mental health is,
and if a kid feels like the characters
in the book, they could say:
“Hey, I feel just like them,”
and maybe that could open up a dialogue
you could have never done on your own.
My sadness made me realize
I could be both a doctor and an artist,
that it didn’t matter that
my path looked different,
that it didn’t matter that it wasn’t
the cookie-cutter way to get there,
that I could still have an amazing life
and a life filled with wonder.
Sadness made me realize I wanted to keep
developing myself in this profession,
in a different way.
My son has made me realize that,
by recognizing it and having
a healthier relationship to it,
I could actually be more
empathetic about your pain.
Because by taking care of mine,
I could better take care of yours.
If I could talk to myself that day,
I would tell myself that sadness
is not a scary friend, but a teacher.
What would happen if sadness
knocked on your door?
Would you answer it?
Would you listen?
What would you change?
Now, my teacher is not that scary anymore.
And now when he comes,
he grabs my hand,
I look at him and I ask him:
“What are you going to teach me now?”
Thank you.
(Applause)