In Defense of Dark Moods

With the holiday season in full swing - and new year's just around the corner - people are feeling ALL the feels such as joy, excitement, comfort, gratitude, but also anxiety, grief, resentment, loneliness. However, the message we receive from everyone - and everything - around us is usually some version of "stay positive!" "brighten up!" "choose happiness!" which implies that we need to quickly fix, push down, and ignore the "darker moods" we may be experiencing. As our guest in today's episode, Mariana Alessandri, argues in her book "Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods," from ancient Western philosophies, to modern psychology and the self-help industry, our dark moods - like grief, sadness, and anger - have been cast as irrational, symptoms of a mental disorder, or as a sign of personal failure and just plain ol' laziness. We begin our discussion with the ancient Stoics to highlight just how long this "broken-ness narrative" has persisted and then move onto the voices of more contemporary philosophers like Audre Lorde and Maria Lugones  who can help us learn how to embrace the dark and to see our painful moods as dignified, as parts of us that make us human.