KE logo

Polar Opposites

Perhaps human beings will always need contrasts to appreciate the fullness of life: Light and dark, holy and defiled, life and death.  Perhaps that is why we characterize knowing something thoroughly as knowing it “inside out.”

The brilliant film Inside Out, which after many watchings I know “inside out”, portrays the inner workings of our emotions. The emotions of sadness (portrayed by an empathic turtle neck wearing blue-colored girl) and joy (portrayed by an exuberant summery dress clad flesh-colored girl) come together, holding hands in their understanding of embracing sadness, perhaps with a message that sadness is not only an essential part of life, it is what brings us to joy as well.

The film, as sophisticated as it is for children and adults is complicit with logocentrism—the privileging of one opposite in favor of the other; in this case joy more than sadness. Joy is the central character—she is the only flesh-colored character—letting us know that she is the central and more privileged of the human emotions. The writer of Inside Out, Pete Docter, though had a moment of insight that led to changing the ending of the film.

“We had done all this research showing the job of each individual emotion — fear keeps you safe, it deals with uncertainty; anger is about fairness, if it feels that you’re getting ripped off or taken advantage of, that’s when anger comes up; sadness deals with loss — and suddenly I had this new revelation, it felt like to me, that those are all true but the real deeper reason we have emotions is to connect us together and that felt big to me.”

My 4 year old daughter explained it this way as she joined her hands together to demonstrate togetherness: “Yeh, sadness connects us and makes us feel happy.”

To peel away another layer of not getting caught up in logocentrism is to unlearn that sadness disconnects us from others and ourselves—quite the opposite—inside out—it can connect us. Perhaps that is why we cry tears of sorrow and tears of joy—not to wash away the feeling or drown in it but to experience the depth of empathy—for ourselves and others.

2 Comments

Corinne Brown · May 5, 2016 at 7:57 pm

Excellent commentary.

louann miller · May 5, 2016 at 8:23 pm

We appreciate the sunshine the last two days–so much more because of the previous days of cold, rain, and snow.

Leave a Reply

Avatar placeholder

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Posts

storytelling blog image

We Are All Storytellers: What’s Your Story?

by Melanie Gruenwald We are all storytellers. Once upon a time, I was born. From there, my journey has been shaped by growth, family, study, friendships, love, travel, career, children, loss, and more growth. There’s

knowledge tree, generated by AI * Gemini Generated Image

The Knowledge Tree

by Dr. David Sanders Two years ago, on Wednesday March 22nd, a petition was signed by over 1,000 leading scientists and thought leaders for all Ai labs to take a sabbatical of no less than

creativity and kabbalah- image of hod painting

Creativity and Kabbalah

by Melanie Gruenwald Creativity is one of the most powerful forces in our lives. It fuels our ability to express, to solve problems, and to bring something entirely new into the world. But where does

Shiri Ariel and Kfir Bibas

Face to Face

by Dr. David Sanders The Rabbis in the Talmud dedicated much discussion to the phrasing of words, the posture of the body and the timing of when to start or end prayers. In one fascinating