No Joy Without Grief

In the News (Nautilus): “Unhappiness Is a Palate-Cleanser,” by Indira M Raman, “…We often behave as though we might find a route to contentment—comfort, satiety, warmth, or some other reward—and be happy all the time if we could just make the right choices. But pleasure is often fleeting, even from the most appealing experiences, giving rise to ennui and sparking the drive for something new and sensational. As a neuroscientist, I can’t help wondering whether the transience of our satisfaction may not in fact be inescapable and instead may reveal an inevitable aspect of the way the brain works, the understanding of which might provide a clue to how to contend with it. …

“Without one’s being able to make comparisons, the world goes gray. In other words, it’s not just that variety is the spice of life; it’s variance that lets us sense anything at all. …

“We perceive things not by their absolute value but by their contrast to what came before. …

“…I think it offers a key to happiness that is compatible with how the brain works. The ability to detect even familiar stimuli can usually be restored by a brief palate cleanser, which literally permits a recovery from desensitization sufficient to intensify a subsequent experience. … Because the brain grades on a curve, endlessly comparing the present with what came just before, the secret to happiness may be unhappiness. Not unmitigated unhappiness, of course, but the transient chill that lets us feel warmth, the sensation of hunger that makes satiety so welcome, the period of near-despair that catapults us into the astonishing experience of triumph. The route to contentment is through contrast.”
Indira M. Raman is a professor in the department of neurobiology at Northwestern University

My Comment: I agree with her. It is impossible to distinguish light without darkness, joy without grief and so on. Our feelings are built on two opposite perceptions, and everything depends on how we evaluate them, weigh them.

The most correct way is for us to begin realizing that bitter sensations were necessary to feel sweet. And then they too become part of the sweet. I wish you such a feeling.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/20/18