Happiness over fulfillment is like iteration over sustainability. The merchant and manufacturing classes figured out long ago that making things to last wasn't profitable, so they've baked planned obsolescence and small iterations with often lateral, superficial "enhancements" to keep people buying and wanting. When you consider the primacy of entertainment and marketing in our culture, you realize that our evolutionary drive to always be searching for more resources and safer environments is being turned against us. Instead of stockpiling food for the winter, we're standing in line to fight over Stanley cups or "limited edition drops" of our favorite clothing brand, as if we're closing in on some resource that we desperately need to get us through the winter.
It's no wonder that happiness, and not fulfillment or contentment, is the focus, because the former is the most immediate, most fleeting, and is therefore commodifiable. If people are content with what they have and base their identities in actual self-esteem and not glittering personas, then they won't be compelled to spend every spare dollar they have chasing meaning.
Just imagine if the masses figured out that happiness is not an end-state, but a transitional and transient state designed to motor us into action; that a healthy mind is supposed to cycle through emotions depending on what is appropriate for day-to-day survival; what a hard-sell that would be for product pushers and dopamine dealers. Absolutely terrible for business, whether that business model is based upon production or preaching. All of these good vibes merchants would have no choice left but to focus solely on outrage.
Thank you for this brilliant expansion, and one I wholeheartedly agree with. The phrase “iteration over sustainability” is a perfect encapsulation of our economic and emotional ecosystems alike. Planned obsolescence isn’t just baked into our tech or fashion, it has crept into our psyches. Even our identities now feel up for seasonal renewal: new aesthetic, new mood board, new “era.” We are coached to be endlessly reinventable, but rarely encouraged to be rooted.
I especially like your point about the way our evolutionary wiring (this beautifully ancient survival system) is now hijacked by marketing. Instead of scanning the horizon for danger, we scan for updates. Instead of hunting for food, we hunt for the next hit of digital relevance. The Stanley cup frenzy is almost too on-the-nose: a water vessel as status symbol in a world that’s parched for meaning.
I’d like to add one more layer to your idea of happiness as transitional. There’s fascinating research in affective neuroscience that suggests emotions like joy are not meant to linger; they’re signals, yes, but also accelerants. They give us enough buoyancy to keep moving. Meanwhile, feelings like grief or even boredom are what create the conditions for deep integration — where actual wisdom accrues. But that’s not flashy. You can’t bottle it and slap a slogan on it. Which is why, as you say, the marketplace thrives on “fleeting”… it can’t afford for us to feel full.
But writing like yours, and conversations like this, they slow the churn. They remind us that the goal was never to feel constant happiness but to feel alive and awake inside a life we’ve chosen, not one we’ve been sold.
This is stunning, each essay you write feels like a lens being turned slightly, and suddenly the familiar becomes unfamiliar, asking to be re-examined. But this one? This one hits with a kind of quiet force. The framing of happiness as both a commodity and a performance and our complicity in chasing it is so sharply drawn. I love how you thread Enlightenment philosophy through late-stage capitalism and still land us in the intimate terrain of our daily emotions.
What really stood out for me, though, is your push toward wholeness rather than happiness. That word—wholeness—carries so much. It reminds me of how we’ve forgotten the dignity of being unfinished, and I remember a line from a poem you wrote a few years ago and posted it on Instagram : “we are all unfinished poems”.
In our hyper-curated culture, wholeness doesn’t trend because it’s not glossy. It’s awkward, slow, often contradictory. But it’s also where we become real.
What if it’s not just that we’re addicted to happiness, but that we’re terrified of meaninglessness?So we overcompensate with filters, purchases, relentless motion, not just to be happy, but to prove (to ourselves?) that our lives are coherent. That they matter. But coherence isn’t always available. Some of the deepest seasons of my life have been the most disjointed , not Instagrammable, but deeply forming. Think of the long griefs that never quite end, or the stillness after failure when everything feels like ash, and yet, something germinates.
You’re right: joy isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s an ache you learn to carry, or the slow relief of accepting you can’t amend your way out of being human. Your final question—Am I alive to my life?—lingers like a blessing.
Thank you for naming what so many feel but can’t articulate. And for doing it with such courage and care, Tamara.
This is one of those comments that feels less like feedback and more like a companion piece, thank you, Céline!
You named something so vital: the terror of meaninglessness. Yes. That’s often the unspoken driver. It would be simply to just want to be happy, but no, we want to make sense. To stitch coherence out of chaos, to arrange the mess into something narratable. But, as you so beautifully said, coherence is often a retroactive gift. In real time, life is jagged, unresolved, full of ellipses. The seasons that shape us most rarely come with clean captions.
And your memory of that old poem — we are all unfinished poems — touched me. I’d nearly forgotten I wrote that, but it feels like the perfect echo here. Wholeness doesn’t mean polished. It means held. Even in pieces.
I’ve been thinking about this, what we need isn’t certainty, but the courage to remain inside the questions. And your words, your reflection, remind me that writing — and reading — can be one of the places we do that together.
With so much gratitude for this beautiful exchange.
This is the kind of essay that needs to be read over and over again. It has the quiet weight of something that reshapes the room once it’s been read.
What struck me most is the your idea of wholeness over happiness—as if you’re inviting us to trade a glittering fiction for something messier, but truer. It’s so liberating this shift from asking “Am I happy?” to “Am I alive to my life?”
But what I kept wondering as I read is: what happens when we mistake purpose itself for a performance? If happiness has become commodified, can the same thing happen to meaning? You hinted at this with wellness culture and microdosing retreats, but I wonder—how do we protect meaning from being marketed back to us as another lifestyle choice? Another checkbox?
You say the people most at peace don’t talk about happiness, but about beauty, curiosity, failure. I’d add: they know how to stay. To stay in boredom, in uncertainty, in grief, in the mundane rituals that aren’t tweetable. They are not only present—they ENDURE. And maybe endurance, in this age of endless scroll, is the real deal.
This line haunted me: “We are addicted to beginnings.” Yes. But what might it look like to be in love with the middle? With the stretch of ordinary days that don’t sparkle, but still hold us?
Thank you for this, Tamara. You wrote something that stays. All your essays stay. Even your daily notes.
Now I wonder—what does joy feel like for you when no one is watching?
This… this is the kind of reply that makes writing feel worth the risk. And your question is profound: yes, meaning can absolutely be commodified. It already is, in some circles. Purpose, now, has a podcast. Self-actualisation comes with merch. Even grief has an aesthetic if you angle the lighting right. We’re sold not just how to live, but how to transcend. As if transcendence were a personal brand.
And you’re right, the real art isn’t in chasing what sparkles, but staying with what doesn’t. The middle, the mundane, the ordinary ache of daily endurance…that’s where intimacy grows. That’s where depth has time to gather itself. To be “in love with the middle” — ohhhh what a phrase! What a brave ambition in an age that rewards reinvention over repetition!
As for your last question… it stopped me. Because joy, when no one is watching, is so quiet it nearly hums. For me, it feels like deep attention. A hot cup of tea going cold because I’m lost in thought. My lover’s hand on my back during an argument. A book that ruins my weekend plans because I have to finish it. The kind of joy that doesn’t need to be declared, because it’s been lived…. Simple!
Thank you for this reflection, Alexander! It stays with me, too.
Ah, what a reply. You made me exhale in that full-bodied way that only happens when something lands deep and true. Honestly, reading your words feels like stumbling upon a kindred mind in the fog, someone who not only sees through the glittering veil but has the language to name what's behind it. You have a way with words—unparalleled.
“Purpose, now, has a podcast.” God, yes. That line made me laugh and wince at the same time. It’s so easy to forget that even our search for transcendence can be colonized by the algorithm. Meaning turned into mood boards. Grief with good lighting. You articulated something I’ve felt gnawing at the edges of modern “depth”—that it’s often just performance in deeper hues. More sepia, less Valencia, but still curated. Still clickable. You’re so right.
And that image of joy as “deep attention”—that’s going to stay with me. It’s so subversive not announcing our joy. Not uploading it. Not documenting it. Just inhabiting it, quietly. The tea going cold, the hand in the argument, the book that undoes your weekend. That’s the joy that doesn't glow—it grounds.
I’m also struck by what you said about repetition. Reinvention is worshipped, but repetition—that’s what raises children, writes novels, keeps love alive past the first rush. It’s also where ritual lives. Not in novelty, but in coming back to the same place differently. Isn’t that truly alchemy? Not turning lead to gold, but turning again and again to the same small thing until it reveals something sacred.
And now I find myself wondering—do you think stillness can survive in a culture built on acceleration? And if not… what do we protect to keep it alive?
Thank you for this exchange. It provoke la thought and invites stillness. And in that, I think, you’ve already answered your own question about joy.
Yes, alchemy (although so many people abuse this word, it has lost its semantic magical property because we see it everywhere) as repetition, not reinvention. We keep circling the same flame until it finally warms us instead of burning us. There’s nothing flashy about it, which is why it’s so powerful.
And your question — whether stillness can survive in a culture built on acceleration — feels like the question beneath everything.
I don’t know the answer!
But I suspect we protect stillness the same way we protect intimacy: by choosing not to broadcast it. By letting some things remain ours.
This is such a Gettysburg admonishment of where we've come as a species. I'm at a loss to add anything of worth to it, save my thanks for breathing exquisite life into a subject I've ranted about many times, but more like a lab with a soupbone, rather than a surgeon with an articulate scalpel.
I'm so very thankful for you and the space you've created here Tamara!!
What a line… a lab with a soupbone vs. a surgeon with a scalpel.! That’s original. But honestly? I think there’s deep value in the rant, too. The howl has its place beside the hymn. Sometimes truth needs to be barked before it can be named.
And I’m grateful for you. This space only matters because of the minds and hearts that show up inside it — soupy bones and all. Thank you for meeting the work with such generosity and fire!
Brilliant! With each paragraph, I find myself more in awe of how accurately you describe the complexities of so many situations and emotions. The line “Any conception of happiness that excludes sorrow is either dishonest or dangerously simplistic,” really resonated with me. It's true, you must know darkness to truly appreciate the light!
Thinking about all the negative feelings we go through in our day to day as valuable information is such a wise advice for navigating life today. These feelings point us directly to the areas where work is needed.
Also, the reflection on our addiction to beginnings is very relatable. We've all been there constantly chasing newness because it feels exciting, full of potential and...easy. But as you say, to find happiness, we must go deeper.
Thank you, your words feel like a conversation I want to keep having!
That you picked up on the sorrow-light paradox means a lot. It’s one of those truths that sounds poetic but is actually deeply pragmatic: without the shadows, there’s no depth perception. And yes, those uncomfortable emotions we try to mute? They are not detours. They are signals. They point us to where our integrity lives, where something is out of sync, where healing waits.
And I love how you put it… newness feels easy. Exactly! It’s the staying that asks something of us. But that’s where the roots grow. That’s where real joy begins, not loud, not viral, but earned.
I am grateful to be met with this kind of clarity.
Joy is to be found in the happy accidents. It’s never fun when it’s on purpose. If we plan a trip to happiness we will be doomed to disappointment when we get there. The destination looks nothing like the brochure and everyone else has already left for some new place.
We get home and we join some amateur theatrical group composed of bored housewives and accountants, where we rehearse happiness in front of an audience never acknowledging that we’re reading someone else’s lines. Happiness has become an act. And we can’t act to save our lives.
I heard someone say, “I’d rather be interesting than happy”. Or something like that.
Your comment is a monologue I wish more self-help books would plagiarise but they never dare, because what you’ve said can’t be monetised. It’s not marketable. It’s too human.
This idea that happiness, when scripted, turns into a low-budget theatre production (amateur housewives and accountants mouthing borrowed lines) is both devastating and accurate. We rehearse joy like it’s an obligation, forgetting that real joy often shows up uninvited, in moments that defy choreography. Like laughter at a funeral. Or crying during a commercial. Or, yes, joining a terrible improv group and realising that at least that was real.
“I’d rather be interesting than happy” might just be the secular version of Kierkegaard’s leap of faith. Because to be interesting is to be alive to contradiction. And that’s the real scandal of our time… contradiction is no longer fashionable. We want coherent narratives, tight branding, clean resolutions. Happiness sells because it’s smooth and symmetrical. But life? Life is jagged, unresolved, polyphonic.
If happiness is the goal, then unhappiness becomes a failure. But if aliveness is the aim, then every detour, every disappointment, every happy accident is part of the plot. Not the Instagram one, the real one.
So maybe we don’t need more happiness? We need more improvisation. Fewer scripts. More people tripping over their lines and laughing anyway. After all, the most alive people I know don’t perform life, they make it up as they go. And that, frankly, is far more interesting.
There is nothing else to add after all the beautiful comments you received.
We, humans, are still looking for that happiness that can get so easily, requiring no effort.
Indeed, “ each promising to upgrade our emotional firmware, none capable of rewriting the basic code” makes us even more vulnerable and weak in front of a problem. Panic installs and we try to find somebody to bring us back the state of happiness. Unfortunately.
Yes, “unfortunately” is the perfect word here. Because the tragedy isn’t just that we keep outsourcing our emotional lives, but that we’ve been conditioned to expect happiness as a default setting: effortless, permanent, and externally provided.
But as you point out so insightfully, no app or retreat can rewrite the “basic code.” We want a download, when what we need is integration. And when it doesn’t work, when happiness doesn’t arrive on schedule, panic sets in. It doesn’t mean we’re broken, hut that we were sold the wrong map.
Real emotional resilience isn’t equal to permanent happiness — it’s about learning to stay steady when the illusion falls apart. And maybe even finding a strange kind of peace there.
Thank you for this thoughtful reflection. It adds more than you know, Iuliana!
This essay is a breath of fresh air and redefines happiness in terms of the raw, intrinsic aspects of life and in a deeply necessary way. I absolutely love it!
I notice the degradation of happiness heavily, on an hourly basis, in the smiles portrayed in instagram photos — where people carefully choose the picture where their smile looks most authentic while showcasing the posh backdrop at just the right angle.
The ostentatious parade of their "happiness" is only meant to convince others of their overflowing joy, and only when the others believe it and reflect it back to them do they believe it too.
This display often translates into real life interactions in the way they avoid uncomfortable conversations and in the tendency to change the subject even when you're relating some of your unrelated-to-them tough times. Even hearing the possibility that life may be something other than rainbows and chocolate stirs iside them a repulsion towards , and ultimately towards realness. They end up framing you as the one with "bad vibes".
The truth is, happiness is a consequence of meaning/fulfilment and one can consider themselves lucky if they can find that path of meaningful, productive sacrifice and gain long-term recurrent moments of true happiness.
The main placeholders for happiness — chasing money, portraying ourselves a certain way, only attending to easygoing relationships — can at best help us suffer less.
We have lost the proper understanding of happiness — this overzealous joy we see all around us is nothing but a hoax and even if it were achievable, what is it that remains behind when "happiness" inevitably leaves us? It is a question we overlook and the price we pay is endlessly running on the treadmill of momentary self-gratification.
You accurately described the performance loop: smile for the feed, curate the joy, wait for the applause, then reinterpret the echo as evidence of actual feeling. It’s emotional ventriloquism, which is authenticity outsourced to external validation. No wonder uncomfortable truths are treated like contagion. Hello “good vibes only” world where reality feels like a breach of etiquette!
Your final point is sharp: if happiness is all we chase, what scaffolding do we have when it disappears? Meaning is what remains when the party’s over. Fulfillment has a spine. Happiness, as we’ve come to define it, often floats.
Thank you for this manifesto in miniature! You understood why I refuse to put a ring light on my soul.
This quote deeply resonates for me because it's been the key to happiness in my own life:
"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
That quote is such a lodestar… Emerson at his most distilled and defiant. Thank you for bringing it here!
It flips the whole modern premise on its head, doesn’t it? Happiness not as a goal, but as a byproduct, something that follows when we are in alignment with meaning, usefulness, and integrity. Not performative joy, but the quiet contentment of having mattered.
It’s beautiful to hear that this has been your own key. It’s grounding, less dopamine, more direction. Thank you for sharing your compass!
Because obvious truths are like glasses on your face — you only notice them when someone points them out, or when they’re smudged beyond use. We live in a culture that prizes the complicated, the branded, the hack. Usefulness? Integrity? Compassion? Those don’t sell out masterclasses or get you a sponsorship deal.
We’ve trained ourselves to overlook the simple because it lacks spectacle. And in this world addicted to performance, the dignity of living well (usefully, honourably) doesn’t trend. It just endures.
So yes, it eludes many. Not because it’s hidden. But because it’s unmarketed. And we’ve forgotten how to see what isn’t for sale.
I couldn't agree with you more. I've thought of it as an example of humans' herd animal instincts. It's easy to understand in light of knowing a core instinct is aligning with one's herd/tribe, and stepping out from it is wildly uncomfortable.
It begs the next question: "What's special about those who 'notice the glasses' on their faces?" Thinking of oneself as enlightened or special invites blinding hubris, but at a certain point, evidence is hard to ignore.
There is a tension between seeing clearly and being seen to see clearly, which is where hubris loves to slip in, uninvited and overdressed.
But let’s take your herd instinct metaphor further, because you’re right. Most people don’t cling to illusion because they are foolish, they do it because it’s adaptive. In evolutionary terms, stepping out of sync with the group didn’t mean you were a maverick. It meant you were lunch. Social cohesion once meant survival. Today it just means algorithmic relevance. The cost of questioning the norm is no longer death by predator, but exile from consensus, which can feel just as terrifying.
So what’s “special” about those who notice the glasses? It’s rarely superiority. It’s often disruption. Trauma, dislocation, cognitive dissonance, these are the moments that fog the lens just enough to reveal it is a lens, which is brilliant, right? Awareness doesn’t come from exceptionalism, it comes from friction. The gifted aren’t always those with extra vision, they are often the ones who have been knocked off course just long enough to realise they were following a track.
What I think is that the real wisdom lies not in believing we are above the herd, but in learning to move among it with awareness, that is choosing when to step out, when to stay in, and never forgetting we wear glasses either way.
Beautifully stated. Seeing what others don't isn't superiority, it's responsibility.
I think you're especially correct about "friction" being the origin of developing the capacity to see, think, and act beyond the boundaries of one's basic, mammalian, and tribal instincts.
Another key is creating a micro-tribe that scratches all those basic instinctual itches. It liberates one to feel safe explorating away from the tribe's fold. I used to think of it as, "I'm not following y'all, you just happen to be going the same direction I am, for as long as that lasts."
Unforeseen downrange effect: my kids. In our youth, we're hyper aware of locating and attaching to a tribe. My kids have been somewhat allergic to this process, though going alone has felt lonely at times for them. I've had numerous conversations about it with them over the years.
How can I be happy? This is the Age of Anxiety. The Age of Armageddon. Of the bomb. The Polar Shift! You hit it with happiness as a commodity, something to be hawked on the street corner with BOGO, discounts, doorprizes. Like good capitalists, a product was created followed by a shortage of the product followed by the NEW & IMPROVED product. "Happy Days Are Here Again." "Make America Happy Again." As usual I defer to my mother who said many times as I grew to be a man, "An idle mind is the Devil's workshop. Get busy." So, I got busy AND kept movin'. It has kept me away from thoughts of unhappiness for several decades. Probably kept me alive.
Your mother’s voice echoes a whole generation’s survival code: keep moving, stay useful, stay ahead of the darkness. And there’s wisdom in that — busyness as ballast, motion as medicine. Sometimes distraction isn’t avoidance, it’s endurance.
And yes, happiness has been shrink-wrapped and sloganised, turned into a scarcity model so it can be sold back to us, limited time only, while supplies last! But what you’re pointing to is something grittier: resilience. Not the glossy happiness of ad campaigns, but the stubborn, everyday kind that’s stitched together by action, routine, and the refusal to quit.
You got busy, and maybe that was your way of staying alive to your life, even when the world tilted toward chaos. Dignity. Bravo! And a kind of earned wisdom we don’t talk about nearly enough.
Ohhh of course, performative happiness often reeks of a curated mirror: not “I’m happy,” but “Look how happy you should think I am.” It’s less about joy and more about control…. controlling perception, narrative, even envy. Narcissism in a ring light, disguised as well-being. You nailed it perfectly!
I promise I’ll read it again, Tamara. I partially did it, but I scanned through some of it, as I couldn’t hold back the excitement: this is another large and shiny window you’re breaking the house in. I wonder if the problems are (at least) two, and not necessarily casually connected. Evolutionary happiness vs the one we know it (the one that spawns off sorrow and depth , in an endless conflicting dynamic… you used spectacular phrases ri describe it!); and the happiness of the appearance (fake happiness) vs (again) the one as we know it. I think the two first sides of these two pairs may overlap occasionally, but are not the same. The first one is behind the modern capitalistic society (happiness as a necessary performance to deliver results), the second one is tied in the negative side effect of capitalism: consumerism .
I like the way your mind works, breaking down the architecture of happiness like it’s a strange old house we’ve all inherited but never questioned. And your point about the two problems is interesting. There really is a crucial difference between the evolutionary “utility” of happiness (as a fleeting motivational nudge) and the existential depth that often emerges through its absence. One is a neurochemical whisper: “keep going.” The other is a hard-earned inner resonance: “you’ve been changed.” They may occasionally overlap, but they speak different dialects of the human condition.
And you’re right to see how these get twisted in modern capitalism. The first is co-opted as fuel: happiness as productivity-enhancer, life coach in a bottle, emotional caffeine. The second gets distorted into a sales pitch: fake it, frame it, filter it. Smile not because you feel joy, but because the algorithm prefers it that way.
What strikes me as especially insidious is that consumerism sells us fake happiness, and it exhausts our capacity for the real kind. We get stuck in the loop of chasing novelty, which leaves no space for the quiet, cumulative kind of joy that builds over time, like trust, or belonging, or watching something you love grow.
Maybe that’s where writing comes in. Maybe we break the spell by naming the absurdity, and reclaiming our sadness as not failure but fertile ground. Thank you for seeing my essay for what it is: a stone thrown at the glasshouse, and maybe a seed planted in the ruins.
Maybe read it again? There’s always more in the slow gaze….
“The first is co-opted as fuel: happiness as productivity-enhancer, life coach in a bottle, emotional caffeine. The second gets distorted into a sales pitch: fake it, frame it, filter it. Smile not because you feel joy, but because the algorithm prefers it that way” perfectly catches (and Elevates) my thinking. Now I stop to reread it slowly , despite the strong desire to follow up immediately: I owe it to both of us.
Take your time, those are the best kind of conversations, the ones that ask us to linger. It’s powerful recognising how even our most intimate states (joy, peace, presence) are being drafted into someone else’s marketing campaign. When we name that manipulation clearly, we loosen its grip.
And maybe that’s what essays like mine really try to do: not offer answers, but slow the scroll just long enough for a deeper question to land. You’re not following up — you’re dwelling. And that’s nice!
That’s a good observation… and yes, I’ve noticed it too. There does seem to be a new genre emerging: the aesthetics of articulate despair. It’s curated vulnerability with just the right amount of mascara-smudged melancholy. But I wouldn’t call it pure performance, more like a survival strategy within a culture that often punishes silent suffering but rewards relatable suffering, preferably well-written and algorithm-friendly.
You’re right to call it a kind of brand. The internet has made even our pain marketable, but there’s also something subversive about it. Especially for women, who for centuries were expected to suffer quietly, prettily, and without complaint. Now, to be sad out loud — eloquently, unapologetically, and with a readership — is emotional exposure. But for those who write self-referential pieces (too many in my opinion), it’s a reclamation.
Of course, there’s a risk of performative misery becoming its own loop. When sadness becomes identity, we may forget it’s also a signal, not a sentence. But I’d still take raw, over-rehearsed. In this world obsessed with cheerful façades, saying, “No, I’m not okay — and here’s why that matters” has become a defiant act.
Then maybe it’s not branding so much as a breadcrumb trail? A way to say: “If you feel this, too, you’re not alone. Let’s un-Photoshop our souls together”.
I can only make assumptions… one never knows people’s motivations.
Yes, and that’s the paradox, isn’t it? Silent sufferers may not speak, but they listen, and often they flock to those who manage to translate the ache into something legible. In that sense, the “relatable sadness vibe” becomes public semaphore, one person’s melancholy becoming another’s mirror. Maybe that’s the unexpected virtue of our overexposed era: we’ve turned to writing not just as performance, but as recognition. Not “look at me,” but “do you feel this too?”
And you’re right: those emotional signals (the ones meant to guide us) get distorted in a consumerist soundscape. We reach for comfort objects when what we might really need is confrontation… not with others, but with ourselves. The marketplace, ever attentive, rushes in with the illusion of resolution: a scented candle, a wellness app, an oat milk latte that promises inner peace with a touch of cinnamon. It’s emotional sleight of hand: distract, soothe, repeat, as I said.
But here’s a thought: in some ways, the “relatable sadness” wave may be a new movement? These writers aren’t just expressing sadness, they’re interrupting the transaction. They’re choosing truth over gloss, depth over dopamine. And that, in a culture built on selling us our own insecurities, might be the most subversive act.
Thank you for making this a richer dialogue, Jack!
Yes, I love that you brought this in because you’re right: not all resistance looks like sorrow. Thanks for the suggestion, I will have a look at Suzi Travis.
Maybe the real rebellion isn’t how we feel, but how we pay attention. Whether through melancholy or cheerful focus, the point is the same: presence over performance. I’ve been saying it over and over again.
Happiness over fulfillment is like iteration over sustainability. The merchant and manufacturing classes figured out long ago that making things to last wasn't profitable, so they've baked planned obsolescence and small iterations with often lateral, superficial "enhancements" to keep people buying and wanting. When you consider the primacy of entertainment and marketing in our culture, you realize that our evolutionary drive to always be searching for more resources and safer environments is being turned against us. Instead of stockpiling food for the winter, we're standing in line to fight over Stanley cups or "limited edition drops" of our favorite clothing brand, as if we're closing in on some resource that we desperately need to get us through the winter.
It's no wonder that happiness, and not fulfillment or contentment, is the focus, because the former is the most immediate, most fleeting, and is therefore commodifiable. If people are content with what they have and base their identities in actual self-esteem and not glittering personas, then they won't be compelled to spend every spare dollar they have chasing meaning.
Just imagine if the masses figured out that happiness is not an end-state, but a transitional and transient state designed to motor us into action; that a healthy mind is supposed to cycle through emotions depending on what is appropriate for day-to-day survival; what a hard-sell that would be for product pushers and dopamine dealers. Absolutely terrible for business, whether that business model is based upon production or preaching. All of these good vibes merchants would have no choice left but to focus solely on outrage.
Stellar work, Tamara. Your writing sustains.
Thank you for this brilliant expansion, and one I wholeheartedly agree with. The phrase “iteration over sustainability” is a perfect encapsulation of our economic and emotional ecosystems alike. Planned obsolescence isn’t just baked into our tech or fashion, it has crept into our psyches. Even our identities now feel up for seasonal renewal: new aesthetic, new mood board, new “era.” We are coached to be endlessly reinventable, but rarely encouraged to be rooted.
I especially like your point about the way our evolutionary wiring (this beautifully ancient survival system) is now hijacked by marketing. Instead of scanning the horizon for danger, we scan for updates. Instead of hunting for food, we hunt for the next hit of digital relevance. The Stanley cup frenzy is almost too on-the-nose: a water vessel as status symbol in a world that’s parched for meaning.
I’d like to add one more layer to your idea of happiness as transitional. There’s fascinating research in affective neuroscience that suggests emotions like joy are not meant to linger; they’re signals, yes, but also accelerants. They give us enough buoyancy to keep moving. Meanwhile, feelings like grief or even boredom are what create the conditions for deep integration — where actual wisdom accrues. But that’s not flashy. You can’t bottle it and slap a slogan on it. Which is why, as you say, the marketplace thrives on “fleeting”… it can’t afford for us to feel full.
But writing like yours, and conversations like this, they slow the churn. They remind us that the goal was never to feel constant happiness but to feel alive and awake inside a life we’ve chosen, not one we’ve been sold.
Thank you for this, Andrew! Truly.
This is stunning, each essay you write feels like a lens being turned slightly, and suddenly the familiar becomes unfamiliar, asking to be re-examined. But this one? This one hits with a kind of quiet force. The framing of happiness as both a commodity and a performance and our complicity in chasing it is so sharply drawn. I love how you thread Enlightenment philosophy through late-stage capitalism and still land us in the intimate terrain of our daily emotions.
What really stood out for me, though, is your push toward wholeness rather than happiness. That word—wholeness—carries so much. It reminds me of how we’ve forgotten the dignity of being unfinished, and I remember a line from a poem you wrote a few years ago and posted it on Instagram : “we are all unfinished poems”.
In our hyper-curated culture, wholeness doesn’t trend because it’s not glossy. It’s awkward, slow, often contradictory. But it’s also where we become real.
What if it’s not just that we’re addicted to happiness, but that we’re terrified of meaninglessness?So we overcompensate with filters, purchases, relentless motion, not just to be happy, but to prove (to ourselves?) that our lives are coherent. That they matter. But coherence isn’t always available. Some of the deepest seasons of my life have been the most disjointed , not Instagrammable, but deeply forming. Think of the long griefs that never quite end, or the stillness after failure when everything feels like ash, and yet, something germinates.
You’re right: joy isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s an ache you learn to carry, or the slow relief of accepting you can’t amend your way out of being human. Your final question—Am I alive to my life?—lingers like a blessing.
Thank you for naming what so many feel but can’t articulate. And for doing it with such courage and care, Tamara.
This is one of those comments that feels less like feedback and more like a companion piece, thank you, Céline!
You named something so vital: the terror of meaninglessness. Yes. That’s often the unspoken driver. It would be simply to just want to be happy, but no, we want to make sense. To stitch coherence out of chaos, to arrange the mess into something narratable. But, as you so beautifully said, coherence is often a retroactive gift. In real time, life is jagged, unresolved, full of ellipses. The seasons that shape us most rarely come with clean captions.
And your memory of that old poem — we are all unfinished poems — touched me. I’d nearly forgotten I wrote that, but it feels like the perfect echo here. Wholeness doesn’t mean polished. It means held. Even in pieces.
I’ve been thinking about this, what we need isn’t certainty, but the courage to remain inside the questions. And your words, your reflection, remind me that writing — and reading — can be one of the places we do that together.
With so much gratitude for this beautiful exchange.
I frequently quote you, by the way! Not only your past poems, but all your essays and notes.
You remain my inspiration and role model. Thank you.
I am incredibly touched…. Merci, Céline!
This is the kind of essay that needs to be read over and over again. It has the quiet weight of something that reshapes the room once it’s been read.
What struck me most is the your idea of wholeness over happiness—as if you’re inviting us to trade a glittering fiction for something messier, but truer. It’s so liberating this shift from asking “Am I happy?” to “Am I alive to my life?”
But what I kept wondering as I read is: what happens when we mistake purpose itself for a performance? If happiness has become commodified, can the same thing happen to meaning? You hinted at this with wellness culture and microdosing retreats, but I wonder—how do we protect meaning from being marketed back to us as another lifestyle choice? Another checkbox?
You say the people most at peace don’t talk about happiness, but about beauty, curiosity, failure. I’d add: they know how to stay. To stay in boredom, in uncertainty, in grief, in the mundane rituals that aren’t tweetable. They are not only present—they ENDURE. And maybe endurance, in this age of endless scroll, is the real deal.
This line haunted me: “We are addicted to beginnings.” Yes. But what might it look like to be in love with the middle? With the stretch of ordinary days that don’t sparkle, but still hold us?
Thank you for this, Tamara. You wrote something that stays. All your essays stay. Even your daily notes.
Now I wonder—what does joy feel like for you when no one is watching?
This… this is the kind of reply that makes writing feel worth the risk. And your question is profound: yes, meaning can absolutely be commodified. It already is, in some circles. Purpose, now, has a podcast. Self-actualisation comes with merch. Even grief has an aesthetic if you angle the lighting right. We’re sold not just how to live, but how to transcend. As if transcendence were a personal brand.
And you’re right, the real art isn’t in chasing what sparkles, but staying with what doesn’t. The middle, the mundane, the ordinary ache of daily endurance…that’s where intimacy grows. That’s where depth has time to gather itself. To be “in love with the middle” — ohhhh what a phrase! What a brave ambition in an age that rewards reinvention over repetition!
As for your last question… it stopped me. Because joy, when no one is watching, is so quiet it nearly hums. For me, it feels like deep attention. A hot cup of tea going cold because I’m lost in thought. My lover’s hand on my back during an argument. A book that ruins my weekend plans because I have to finish it. The kind of joy that doesn’t need to be declared, because it’s been lived…. Simple!
Thank you for this reflection, Alexander! It stays with me, too.
Ah, what a reply. You made me exhale in that full-bodied way that only happens when something lands deep and true. Honestly, reading your words feels like stumbling upon a kindred mind in the fog, someone who not only sees through the glittering veil but has the language to name what's behind it. You have a way with words—unparalleled.
“Purpose, now, has a podcast.” God, yes. That line made me laugh and wince at the same time. It’s so easy to forget that even our search for transcendence can be colonized by the algorithm. Meaning turned into mood boards. Grief with good lighting. You articulated something I’ve felt gnawing at the edges of modern “depth”—that it’s often just performance in deeper hues. More sepia, less Valencia, but still curated. Still clickable. You’re so right.
And that image of joy as “deep attention”—that’s going to stay with me. It’s so subversive not announcing our joy. Not uploading it. Not documenting it. Just inhabiting it, quietly. The tea going cold, the hand in the argument, the book that undoes your weekend. That’s the joy that doesn't glow—it grounds.
I’m also struck by what you said about repetition. Reinvention is worshipped, but repetition—that’s what raises children, writes novels, keeps love alive past the first rush. It’s also where ritual lives. Not in novelty, but in coming back to the same place differently. Isn’t that truly alchemy? Not turning lead to gold, but turning again and again to the same small thing until it reveals something sacred.
And now I find myself wondering—do you think stillness can survive in a culture built on acceleration? And if not… what do we protect to keep it alive?
Thank you for this exchange. It provoke la thought and invites stillness. And in that, I think, you’ve already answered your own question about joy.
Yes, alchemy (although so many people abuse this word, it has lost its semantic magical property because we see it everywhere) as repetition, not reinvention. We keep circling the same flame until it finally warms us instead of burning us. There’s nothing flashy about it, which is why it’s so powerful.
And your question — whether stillness can survive in a culture built on acceleration — feels like the question beneath everything.
I don’t know the answer!
But I suspect we protect stillness the same way we protect intimacy: by choosing not to broadcast it. By letting some things remain ours.
This exchange is one of those things. Thank you!
This is such a Gettysburg admonishment of where we've come as a species. I'm at a loss to add anything of worth to it, save my thanks for breathing exquisite life into a subject I've ranted about many times, but more like a lab with a soupbone, rather than a surgeon with an articulate scalpel.
I'm so very thankful for you and the space you've created here Tamara!!
What a line… a lab with a soupbone vs. a surgeon with a scalpel.! That’s original. But honestly? I think there’s deep value in the rant, too. The howl has its place beside the hymn. Sometimes truth needs to be barked before it can be named.
And I’m grateful for you. This space only matters because of the minds and hearts that show up inside it — soupy bones and all. Thank you for meeting the work with such generosity and fire!
Thank you, Tamara,
You host this space with such grace and generosity, that it's a joy to be here!!
What a writer always wants to hear. Thank you!
We were never meant to shine all the time. Some things only make sense in the dark.
Absolutely! And yet here we are, living under the tyranny of the ring light, taught to broadcast our brilliance even while we’re breaking.
But you’re right, not everything germinates in sunlight. Some truths only sprout in shadow.
“Sprouts in shadows”
Love that line. Can I steal it?
Sure :)
🙏🏼
Brilliant! With each paragraph, I find myself more in awe of how accurately you describe the complexities of so many situations and emotions. The line “Any conception of happiness that excludes sorrow is either dishonest or dangerously simplistic,” really resonated with me. It's true, you must know darkness to truly appreciate the light!
Thinking about all the negative feelings we go through in our day to day as valuable information is such a wise advice for navigating life today. These feelings point us directly to the areas where work is needed.
Also, the reflection on our addiction to beginnings is very relatable. We've all been there constantly chasing newness because it feels exciting, full of potential and...easy. But as you say, to find happiness, we must go deeper.
Thank you, T!
Thank you, your words feel like a conversation I want to keep having!
That you picked up on the sorrow-light paradox means a lot. It’s one of those truths that sounds poetic but is actually deeply pragmatic: without the shadows, there’s no depth perception. And yes, those uncomfortable emotions we try to mute? They are not detours. They are signals. They point us to where our integrity lives, where something is out of sync, where healing waits.
And I love how you put it… newness feels easy. Exactly! It’s the staying that asks something of us. But that’s where the roots grow. That’s where real joy begins, not loud, not viral, but earned.
I am grateful to be met with this kind of clarity.
Joy is to be found in the happy accidents. It’s never fun when it’s on purpose. If we plan a trip to happiness we will be doomed to disappointment when we get there. The destination looks nothing like the brochure and everyone else has already left for some new place.
We get home and we join some amateur theatrical group composed of bored housewives and accountants, where we rehearse happiness in front of an audience never acknowledging that we’re reading someone else’s lines. Happiness has become an act. And we can’t act to save our lives.
I heard someone say, “I’d rather be interesting than happy”. Or something like that.
Your comment is a monologue I wish more self-help books would plagiarise but they never dare, because what you’ve said can’t be monetised. It’s not marketable. It’s too human.
This idea that happiness, when scripted, turns into a low-budget theatre production (amateur housewives and accountants mouthing borrowed lines) is both devastating and accurate. We rehearse joy like it’s an obligation, forgetting that real joy often shows up uninvited, in moments that defy choreography. Like laughter at a funeral. Or crying during a commercial. Or, yes, joining a terrible improv group and realising that at least that was real.
“I’d rather be interesting than happy” might just be the secular version of Kierkegaard’s leap of faith. Because to be interesting is to be alive to contradiction. And that’s the real scandal of our time… contradiction is no longer fashionable. We want coherent narratives, tight branding, clean resolutions. Happiness sells because it’s smooth and symmetrical. But life? Life is jagged, unresolved, polyphonic.
If happiness is the goal, then unhappiness becomes a failure. But if aliveness is the aim, then every detour, every disappointment, every happy accident is part of the plot. Not the Instagram one, the real one.
So maybe we don’t need more happiness? We need more improvisation. Fewer scripts. More people tripping over their lines and laughing anyway. After all, the most alive people I know don’t perform life, they make it up as they go. And that, frankly, is far more interesting.
There is nothing else to add after all the beautiful comments you received.
We, humans, are still looking for that happiness that can get so easily, requiring no effort.
Indeed, “ each promising to upgrade our emotional firmware, none capable of rewriting the basic code” makes us even more vulnerable and weak in front of a problem. Panic installs and we try to find somebody to bring us back the state of happiness. Unfortunately.
Yes, “unfortunately” is the perfect word here. Because the tragedy isn’t just that we keep outsourcing our emotional lives, but that we’ve been conditioned to expect happiness as a default setting: effortless, permanent, and externally provided.
But as you point out so insightfully, no app or retreat can rewrite the “basic code.” We want a download, when what we need is integration. And when it doesn’t work, when happiness doesn’t arrive on schedule, panic sets in. It doesn’t mean we’re broken, hut that we were sold the wrong map.
Real emotional resilience isn’t equal to permanent happiness — it’s about learning to stay steady when the illusion falls apart. And maybe even finding a strange kind of peace there.
Thank you for this thoughtful reflection. It adds more than you know, Iuliana!
This essay is a breath of fresh air and redefines happiness in terms of the raw, intrinsic aspects of life and in a deeply necessary way. I absolutely love it!
I notice the degradation of happiness heavily, on an hourly basis, in the smiles portrayed in instagram photos — where people carefully choose the picture where their smile looks most authentic while showcasing the posh backdrop at just the right angle.
The ostentatious parade of their "happiness" is only meant to convince others of their overflowing joy, and only when the others believe it and reflect it back to them do they believe it too.
This display often translates into real life interactions in the way they avoid uncomfortable conversations and in the tendency to change the subject even when you're relating some of your unrelated-to-them tough times. Even hearing the possibility that life may be something other than rainbows and chocolate stirs iside them a repulsion towards , and ultimately towards realness. They end up framing you as the one with "bad vibes".
The truth is, happiness is a consequence of meaning/fulfilment and one can consider themselves lucky if they can find that path of meaningful, productive sacrifice and gain long-term recurrent moments of true happiness.
The main placeholders for happiness — chasing money, portraying ourselves a certain way, only attending to easygoing relationships — can at best help us suffer less.
We have lost the proper understanding of happiness — this overzealous joy we see all around us is nothing but a hoax and even if it were achievable, what is it that remains behind when "happiness" inevitably leaves us? It is a question we overlook and the price we pay is endlessly running on the treadmill of momentary self-gratification.
You accurately described the performance loop: smile for the feed, curate the joy, wait for the applause, then reinterpret the echo as evidence of actual feeling. It’s emotional ventriloquism, which is authenticity outsourced to external validation. No wonder uncomfortable truths are treated like contagion. Hello “good vibes only” world where reality feels like a breach of etiquette!
Your final point is sharp: if happiness is all we chase, what scaffolding do we have when it disappears? Meaning is what remains when the party’s over. Fulfillment has a spine. Happiness, as we’ve come to define it, often floats.
Thank you for this manifesto in miniature! You understood why I refuse to put a ring light on my soul.
Thanks. Replete with wisdom, & worthy of cogitation, as usual.
Thank you so much!
This quote deeply resonates for me because it's been the key to happiness in my own life:
"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
That quote is such a lodestar… Emerson at his most distilled and defiant. Thank you for bringing it here!
It flips the whole modern premise on its head, doesn’t it? Happiness not as a goal, but as a byproduct, something that follows when we are in alignment with meaning, usefulness, and integrity. Not performative joy, but the quiet contentment of having mattered.
It’s beautiful to hear that this has been your own key. It’s grounding, less dopamine, more direction. Thank you for sharing your compass!
It makes me wonder: why does something that seems so simple, so obvious elude so many?
Because obvious truths are like glasses on your face — you only notice them when someone points them out, or when they’re smudged beyond use. We live in a culture that prizes the complicated, the branded, the hack. Usefulness? Integrity? Compassion? Those don’t sell out masterclasses or get you a sponsorship deal.
We’ve trained ourselves to overlook the simple because it lacks spectacle. And in this world addicted to performance, the dignity of living well (usefully, honourably) doesn’t trend. It just endures.
So yes, it eludes many. Not because it’s hidden. But because it’s unmarketed. And we’ve forgotten how to see what isn’t for sale.
I couldn't agree with you more. I've thought of it as an example of humans' herd animal instincts. It's easy to understand in light of knowing a core instinct is aligning with one's herd/tribe, and stepping out from it is wildly uncomfortable.
It begs the next question: "What's special about those who 'notice the glasses' on their faces?" Thinking of oneself as enlightened or special invites blinding hubris, but at a certain point, evidence is hard to ignore.
There is a tension between seeing clearly and being seen to see clearly, which is where hubris loves to slip in, uninvited and overdressed.
But let’s take your herd instinct metaphor further, because you’re right. Most people don’t cling to illusion because they are foolish, they do it because it’s adaptive. In evolutionary terms, stepping out of sync with the group didn’t mean you were a maverick. It meant you were lunch. Social cohesion once meant survival. Today it just means algorithmic relevance. The cost of questioning the norm is no longer death by predator, but exile from consensus, which can feel just as terrifying.
So what’s “special” about those who notice the glasses? It’s rarely superiority. It’s often disruption. Trauma, dislocation, cognitive dissonance, these are the moments that fog the lens just enough to reveal it is a lens, which is brilliant, right? Awareness doesn’t come from exceptionalism, it comes from friction. The gifted aren’t always those with extra vision, they are often the ones who have been knocked off course just long enough to realise they were following a track.
What I think is that the real wisdom lies not in believing we are above the herd, but in learning to move among it with awareness, that is choosing when to step out, when to stay in, and never forgetting we wear glasses either way.
Beautifully stated. Seeing what others don't isn't superiority, it's responsibility.
I think you're especially correct about "friction" being the origin of developing the capacity to see, think, and act beyond the boundaries of one's basic, mammalian, and tribal instincts.
Another key is creating a micro-tribe that scratches all those basic instinctual itches. It liberates one to feel safe explorating away from the tribe's fold. I used to think of it as, "I'm not following y'all, you just happen to be going the same direction I am, for as long as that lasts."
Unforeseen downrange effect: my kids. In our youth, we're hyper aware of locating and attaching to a tribe. My kids have been somewhat allergic to this process, though going alone has felt lonely at times for them. I've had numerous conversations about it with them over the years.
How can I be happy? This is the Age of Anxiety. The Age of Armageddon. Of the bomb. The Polar Shift! You hit it with happiness as a commodity, something to be hawked on the street corner with BOGO, discounts, doorprizes. Like good capitalists, a product was created followed by a shortage of the product followed by the NEW & IMPROVED product. "Happy Days Are Here Again." "Make America Happy Again." As usual I defer to my mother who said many times as I grew to be a man, "An idle mind is the Devil's workshop. Get busy." So, I got busy AND kept movin'. It has kept me away from thoughts of unhappiness for several decades. Probably kept me alive.
Your mother’s voice echoes a whole generation’s survival code: keep moving, stay useful, stay ahead of the darkness. And there’s wisdom in that — busyness as ballast, motion as medicine. Sometimes distraction isn’t avoidance, it’s endurance.
And yes, happiness has been shrink-wrapped and sloganised, turned into a scarcity model so it can be sold back to us, limited time only, while supplies last! But what you’re pointing to is something grittier: resilience. Not the glossy happiness of ad campaigns, but the stubborn, everyday kind that’s stitched together by action, routine, and the refusal to quit.
You got busy, and maybe that was your way of staying alive to your life, even when the world tilted toward chaos. Dignity. Bravo! And a kind of earned wisdom we don’t talk about nearly enough.
Thanks for sharing it here, Jeff!
So good... I enjoyed thanks
Thank you!
Love this and all the comments. I would only add, the exhibition of happiness as narcissistic performance. I've run into a lot of that!
Ohhh of course, performative happiness often reeks of a curated mirror: not “I’m happy,” but “Look how happy you should think I am.” It’s less about joy and more about control…. controlling perception, narrative, even envy. Narcissism in a ring light, disguised as well-being. You nailed it perfectly!
I promise I’ll read it again, Tamara. I partially did it, but I scanned through some of it, as I couldn’t hold back the excitement: this is another large and shiny window you’re breaking the house in. I wonder if the problems are (at least) two, and not necessarily casually connected. Evolutionary happiness vs the one we know it (the one that spawns off sorrow and depth , in an endless conflicting dynamic… you used spectacular phrases ri describe it!); and the happiness of the appearance (fake happiness) vs (again) the one as we know it. I think the two first sides of these two pairs may overlap occasionally, but are not the same. The first one is behind the modern capitalistic society (happiness as a necessary performance to deliver results), the second one is tied in the negative side effect of capitalism: consumerism .
I like the way your mind works, breaking down the architecture of happiness like it’s a strange old house we’ve all inherited but never questioned. And your point about the two problems is interesting. There really is a crucial difference between the evolutionary “utility” of happiness (as a fleeting motivational nudge) and the existential depth that often emerges through its absence. One is a neurochemical whisper: “keep going.” The other is a hard-earned inner resonance: “you’ve been changed.” They may occasionally overlap, but they speak different dialects of the human condition.
And you’re right to see how these get twisted in modern capitalism. The first is co-opted as fuel: happiness as productivity-enhancer, life coach in a bottle, emotional caffeine. The second gets distorted into a sales pitch: fake it, frame it, filter it. Smile not because you feel joy, but because the algorithm prefers it that way.
What strikes me as especially insidious is that consumerism sells us fake happiness, and it exhausts our capacity for the real kind. We get stuck in the loop of chasing novelty, which leaves no space for the quiet, cumulative kind of joy that builds over time, like trust, or belonging, or watching something you love grow.
Maybe that’s where writing comes in. Maybe we break the spell by naming the absurdity, and reclaiming our sadness as not failure but fertile ground. Thank you for seeing my essay for what it is: a stone thrown at the glasshouse, and maybe a seed planted in the ruins.
Maybe read it again? There’s always more in the slow gaze….
Yes, I am, indeed!!
I sent the message, ahead of time, by mistake ….but was mostly done anyway !😀
“The first is co-opted as fuel: happiness as productivity-enhancer, life coach in a bottle, emotional caffeine. The second gets distorted into a sales pitch: fake it, frame it, filter it. Smile not because you feel joy, but because the algorithm prefers it that way” perfectly catches (and Elevates) my thinking. Now I stop to reread it slowly , despite the strong desire to follow up immediately: I owe it to both of us.
Take your time, those are the best kind of conversations, the ones that ask us to linger. It’s powerful recognising how even our most intimate states (joy, peace, presence) are being drafted into someone else’s marketing campaign. When we name that manipulation clearly, we loosen its grip.
And maybe that’s what essays like mine really try to do: not offer answers, but slow the scroll just long enough for a deeper question to land. You’re not following up — you’re dwelling. And that’s nice!
That’s a good observation… and yes, I’ve noticed it too. There does seem to be a new genre emerging: the aesthetics of articulate despair. It’s curated vulnerability with just the right amount of mascara-smudged melancholy. But I wouldn’t call it pure performance, more like a survival strategy within a culture that often punishes silent suffering but rewards relatable suffering, preferably well-written and algorithm-friendly.
You’re right to call it a kind of brand. The internet has made even our pain marketable, but there’s also something subversive about it. Especially for women, who for centuries were expected to suffer quietly, prettily, and without complaint. Now, to be sad out loud — eloquently, unapologetically, and with a readership — is emotional exposure. But for those who write self-referential pieces (too many in my opinion), it’s a reclamation.
Of course, there’s a risk of performative misery becoming its own loop. When sadness becomes identity, we may forget it’s also a signal, not a sentence. But I’d still take raw, over-rehearsed. In this world obsessed with cheerful façades, saying, “No, I’m not okay — and here’s why that matters” has become a defiant act.
Then maybe it’s not branding so much as a breadcrumb trail? A way to say: “If you feel this, too, you’re not alone. Let’s un-Photoshop our souls together”.
I can only make assumptions… one never knows people’s motivations.
Yes, and that’s the paradox, isn’t it? Silent sufferers may not speak, but they listen, and often they flock to those who manage to translate the ache into something legible. In that sense, the “relatable sadness vibe” becomes public semaphore, one person’s melancholy becoming another’s mirror. Maybe that’s the unexpected virtue of our overexposed era: we’ve turned to writing not just as performance, but as recognition. Not “look at me,” but “do you feel this too?”
And you’re right: those emotional signals (the ones meant to guide us) get distorted in a consumerist soundscape. We reach for comfort objects when what we might really need is confrontation… not with others, but with ourselves. The marketplace, ever attentive, rushes in with the illusion of resolution: a scented candle, a wellness app, an oat milk latte that promises inner peace with a touch of cinnamon. It’s emotional sleight of hand: distract, soothe, repeat, as I said.
But here’s a thought: in some ways, the “relatable sadness” wave may be a new movement? These writers aren’t just expressing sadness, they’re interrupting the transaction. They’re choosing truth over gloss, depth over dopamine. And that, in a culture built on selling us our own insecurities, might be the most subversive act.
Thank you for making this a richer dialogue, Jack!
Yes, I love that you brought this in because you’re right: not all resistance looks like sorrow. Thanks for the suggestion, I will have a look at Suzi Travis.
Maybe the real rebellion isn’t how we feel, but how we pay attention. Whether through melancholy or cheerful focus, the point is the same: presence over performance. I’ve been saying it over and over again.
Thank you, Jack!