Inside Out - Shared Sadness Creates Vulnerable Love!

If you are someone who is tired of having to wear a mask of happiness way more than you would like, if you are someone who feels that knowing how to be sad is an important part of being human, then Pixar's new movie 'Inside Out' will deeply resonate with you. Inside Out is a brilliantly written deeply moving story that shows why knowing how to grieve is important for healthy living. 

The culture we live in today teaches us how to be happy-all-the-time. None appears to want to be friend with a sad person. Sadness is not seen as leading to success. So we learn to suppress sadness. The down side of this is people do not know how to turn their grief into a vulnerable loving shared experience. Inside Out takes an inside out view of the human psyche to show that if we do not know how to make grief into a shared loving experience, we will loose our ability to be human. 

Inside Out tells its story at two levels. One, at the level of human characters. Two, at the level of the emotions which drive the human characters. The emotions which control the human being, joy, sadness, anger, fear and disgust, are personified as a group of friends inside the mind of the human characters. In the movie, we get to see the story unfold from the point of view of these emotional characters in the mind of a little girl whose family is moving from Minnesota to California. 

Among the five emotional character in the mind of the girl joy is the most valued and sadness the least. The five emotional characters decide that to giving joy the full reign will keep the girl happy by building happy memories. In their urge to create more and more happy memories, they sideline sadness. All is well until the transition leads the girl to sad situations. The emotions which have only been used to given joy full control do not know how to let sadness handle the sad situation. Anger takes control instead of sadness. So the sad situation spirals out of control. This creates a breach between the relationship between the girl and her parents. The movie is about how the emotion character joy realizes that she was wrong in sidelining sadness. Joy learns that sadness is very valuable in her own way and allows sadness to control the situation. 

When joy, anger, fear and disgust finally let sadness take control over legitimately sad situations it creates vulnerable bonding  between the girl and her Mom and Dad. This sharing heals their relationship. Sadness shared creates vulnerable love. Love overcomes sadness and transforms it into an enriched bonding experience. Attempts to be happy all the time results in unbalanced, isolated, dichotomous lives. Knowing how to share sadness in vulnerable relationships is crucial for a healthy living. Inside Out tells shows this truth in a deeply perceptive and funny way.