Sadness Is Not the Enemy
- Darrell Smith
- Aug 28
- 5 min read
An Exploration of the Misunderstood Emotion in 'Inside Out'
This past summer, I was asked to write and film a piece about Sadness from Inside Out for a youth camp's teaching curriculum. I was surprised by how it turned out, and thought I had to share it with you all. Because although we may not be teenagers trying to first navigate and discuss our emotions, we are still humans with those very same, complicated feelings—and then some. Here is the written portion of that exploration on Sadness.
View an invite to hear my friend Jonathan Foster speak at the end of this piece!
Let’s start this with a question.
When Sadness shows up in Inside Out—the little blue character, soft-spoken, big glasses, kind of shuffling around—how do you react? That is, what's your first instinct? To be honest, I have the same reaction as Joy in the movie:
· Let’s keep Sadness away from things.
· Don't let her touch the memories.
· Don't let her near the controls.
· Let’s just keep her in the circle and keep her contained.
A lot of us probably treat our own sadness that way...
· We try to contain it. Manage it. Outrun it.
· We distract it with a screen or a song or staying busy…so that it never quite catches us.
But here's what I think Inside Out gets right—and perhaps what our spiritual ancestors are saying in the Psalms:
Sadness is not the enemy.
In Inside Out 2, Riley—the one with all the feelings inside—is a teenager.
What I think the second movie gets right is the fact that “growing up” doesn’t make the feelings or emotions any easier.
In fact, Riley’s internal world gets more complicated...
· New emotions and experiences come on the scene
· Feelings start to comingle and collaborate
· And…Sadness is still there—not as a mistake or a glitch in the system—but as an integral part of Riley.
There's a moment at the end of the first film that wrecks me. Bing Bong—the imaginary friend—sacrifices himself to get Joy back to Riley.
As he fades away, all the light and love Bing Bong shared with Riley as a child flashes before their eyes and for the first time, Joy cries.
She lets herself grieve.
She doesn't deny it…doesn’t ignore it…she feels it.
That's not a flaw in the story. That is the story.
True Joy isn’t the opposite of Sadness…it includes it.
Joy incorporates grief.
Our spiritual ancestors understood that.
In Psalm 34 they wrote: "When your heart is broken, God is right there; breathing with you when your spirit is crushed."
They didn’t write “God is close to those who get over it quickly,” or “Near to the ones who keep smiling and don't make a scene.”
They wrote of a God is ONE with the brokenhearted…a uniting Sacred Presence that is big enough to include sadness…to incorporate grief.
In one breath, Psalm 42 states: “My tears have been my food day and night." And in the next breath questions: "Why, my soul, are you downcast?Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God."
That might seem like the writer is changing their mind—talking themselves out of grief—but I don't think that's what's going on. I think Psalm 42 is a poetic attempt to hold all of it at the same time. The tears are real…and so is the frustration…and so is the hope.
Nothing is cancelled. It all belongs.
That's what Joy figures out by the end of Inside Out: A life well-lived isn't one where nothing hurts. It's one where even the hurt has a place.
That place, by the way, isn’t earned by being big enough…or tragic enough.
There is a very human and unhelpful thing we all tend do with our grief—we compare it to someone else’s.
We experience real loss—and instead of sitting with it or processing it—we spend real time and energy wondering if we're allowed to be sad, because we know someone else who has it worse.
Maybe your parents are still together, so you feel like you can't be sad about your friend group falling apart.
Maybe you've never lost anyone to death, so you feel like your loneliness doesn't count.
Whatever the comparison is, we need to STOP…
· and remember that grief is not a competition
· there’s no ranking system.
· there is no threshold we have to cross before our sadness is legitimate
Sadness, grief, loss…these are non-comparative spaces.
When we diminish our pain by comparing it to someone else's, we're not being humble.
We are turning our back on what is actually going on inside of us.
That’s not heroic. It’s abandonment.
A pastor friend of mine named Jonathan Foster wrote a book about his experience with grief. In it, he says:
"Grief is an ache that winds up going everywhere generally…because it's a love that goes nowhere specifically."
It’s a hard sentence to face…but it’s true.
When we lose something or someone, the love we had doesn't just disappear.
It has to go somewhere.
And when it can't find its place—because we are too busy comparing our loss to someone else’s—the ache will not subside. It’s normal. We all do it. But only in resisting comparison and letting the ache do its work can we begin to take the next step—whatever that may be.
One final bit of wisdom about sadness from the Pixar characters and our spiritual ancestors: there is no right way through grief...
· There is no appropriate schedule.
· It’s not a straight line.
· It’s a roller coaster in the dark.
You'll think you're doing better and then a song will come on, or you'll smell something, or it'll be a Tuesday, or for no reason at all—it'll will hit you again—crashing over you like a wave.
That's not failure. That's grief.
Don't let anyone—not a parent, not a pastor, not a well-meaning friend—tell you otherwise.
The only wrong way to grieve is not to grieve.
When we try to skip it—stuff it down or pretend like it’s no big deal—we don't escape it. We just carry it differently…and eventually, it finds another way out.
We have to go through it. Not around it. Not over it. Through it.
But here's the promise: we don't go through it alone.
As the voices of our ancestors declare: “God is with the brokenhearted.”
With us…not watching from a safe distance while we sort it out.
With us...present in the exact time and place where the hurt is.
So, if Sadness shows up today—in you, around you, in someone you love—don't push her into the corner. Don't hand her a circle and tell her to stay inside it.
Sadness is not the enemy.
Let her do what she’s there to do.
Sadness can be the thing that helps us finally reach out.
It can tell the truth when everything else is pretending.
It can open us up to being held—by the people who love us, and by the God who is with us.
That is where healing begins.
My friend, Jonathan Foster, who also was the editor of my book Spiritual But Not Anxious, will be speaking at Alamo Heights United Methodist Church on Sunday, August 30. Join us here.
He was also the first guest on my podcast, Common Space! We had an in-depth discussion on grief, his writing process, and more:
Comments