By Linda Fodrini‐Johnson, MA, MFT, CMC
Founder & Chairman, Eldercare Services
“Sadness” is the other side of “Joy”. I learned this lesson in viewing the new Pixar film, “Inside Out” – where the main character is a young girl that moves with her family to San Francisco from Minnesota. You can only imagine the loss and many of you might have had the same experience of sadness or loss from a move as a child or an adult.
Only Pixar can give the emotions we all feel a “real body and persona” that revolve around “joy”, but the movie shows how we have all these emotions that we exhibit for a reason – sometimes it is to protect ourselves when it comes to fear and anger, and other times it is to feel the true blessings of “joy” so we need to experience sadness.
What was so clear in the movie is that without the feeling of “sadness” we cannot see where we want to go: that is the place of “joy”. We actually need sadness; it helps us regulate an emotional balance as shown in the movie when the young girl was able to connect to her sadness. Her anger and fear were not the director of her actions – but the feeling of “sadness” sent her back to where “joy” blossomed for her and that was in her family.
Great movie – recommend for all adults. Not quite sure kids under 10 would get the real messages in this beautiful film.