One of the most frustrating things about feeling sad is that most people always want to fix sadness or make it go away. Their efforts also make it seem like we ourselves need to try to fix our emotion or make it go away when we are feeling the gray waves of sadness. In my experience, this labels my sadness as something wrong or shameful. 

In 2015, Pixar came out with Inside Out, a comedy-drama about the emotions that live inside us and how they interact with one another. As a fan of NBC’s The Office, I was so excited to hear that Phyllis Smith and Mindy Kaling were both voicing main characters, Sadness and Disgust. As I watched the movie, I saw that Sadness’ character seemed to be the antagonist at first. All the other emotions, especially Joy, became irritated with her interfering and “messing up” the day-to-day experiences that Riley had. Sadness and Joy ended up working together to make a pathway of healing for Riley. Inside Out painted a beautiful picture of the importance of all emotions, as well as the reality of feeling multiple emotions at once. The movie also pointed out a major flaw in our society’s understanding of emotions: that sadness needs to be fixed.