diff --git a/content/posts/happysad.md b/content/posts/happysad.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..40a9994 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/happysad.md @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +title: "happysad" +date: 2025-07-30 +draft: false +--- + +I was thinking on the train today about how, although I basically despise social +media, I still use it somewhat regularly. However, I don't use it in as much as +I don't post on it or interact in any way but liking things. The thing I use +social media for is finding happysad, and it seems to me that the algorithms +(mostly of instagram, youtube, and tiktok) are good places to look. + +happysad is the faith in humanity emotion. It's the feeling I get when I watch +a video of a man taking photos of strangers on the street, slowly learning their +language and doing his best to communicate with them. It's the feeling I get +when I see a doting father post a video of his friendship with his daughter and +their shared love of a song. It's the feeling I get when I see someone sit down +and have tea in the park with an old woman, letting her tell her story and share +it with all those watching. Or when a man offers strangers $100 to cook for him +until he finds a charismatic Austrian man in orange who invites him into his +beautiful home to do just that. It's a feeling of warmth in my heart, and faith +in the world. But it makes me want to (and sometimes I do) cry. + +Part of me associates the feeling with nostalgia, but that doesn't feel right +because to me nostalgia _is_ sad. Nostalgia might be felt looking back at old +photos and remembering happy times, yes, but it's also a feeling of loss for +those same times. A feeling of separation maybe? It's similar to the feeling +I get listening to a large choir singing together, often some hymn or another, +full of harmony but sometimes just singing along as a big group An aside here +- I recommend Nearer My God to Thee by the BYU Vocal Group, or Space Oddity by +Choir Choir Choir (the 500+ people version), or (I know I'm going on a bit here) +the video of the crowd singing Bohemian Rhapsody before the Green Day concert in +Hyde Park in 2017. + +I'm still not sure what exactly causes happysad to occur for me personally, but +I know it's something I seek out. I love finding videos in Instagram Reels that +evoke it for me. I find it a very cathartic feeling and often feel positive, +uplifted, optimistic. I appreciate that I have access to platforms that give me +access to such content. + +P.S. I thought of another instance of lots of people singing, the Kentucky State +Choir sing the American national anthem every year (I think) and the 2013 +version is stunning.