Character flaws can guide our growth

The current happiness epidemic, which demands we feel happy at every moment in our lives, has reached a point of crisis. It has become the new-age drug, addicting a generation. We cannot get enough of it, and even when we have the ‘high’ it is temporary and leaves us feeling flat once it has passed.

We are made to feel inferior and insecure if we cannot reach the level of the perceived happiness of our Facebook friends. A moment of sadness is viewed as intolerable and we seek the support of friends and therapists to rescue us from this melancholy.

If negative emotions are so unwanted what service to they fulfil? Are they to be compared to a disease whose only task is to be eradicated?

Negative emotions necessitate that we confront imperfections within the world and within ourselves.  To live optimally in the world and endure its challenges, it's necessary to engage the full range of psychological states that we have inherited as humans. 

Anger is not necessarily a bad thing. It is the natural response to an unfair world. It prompts us to action; to stand up and do something about the distortion of justice. The danger in anger, is that much of the time the ‘injustice’ is only a ‘perception’ of injustice and should therefore be discounted whereas real injustice demands action.

Anger drove the civil rights movement, the end of apartheid and the creation of revolutions.                It can motivate positive action.

Guilt forces us to turn inwards and examine what led us to such a state and what we need to do in order to fix it. It can motivate us to make amends.

Envy demands that we ‘up our game’ and push ourselves to realise our neglected inner potential.

Without fear we would become uncritical risk takers and pathetically endanger ourselves.

 Frustration forces us to look at problems from a new angle and promotes innovation and ingenuity.

Sadness encourages us to see life in perspective; to think rationally and appreciate the small things.

Every negative emotion brings with it a groundswell of opportunities, avoiding ‘bad’ emotions means also successfully avoiding potential opportunities for real happiness.