"Inside Out" stands in opposition to an entire culture that tells people that happiness is the highest, best and sometimes only permissible emotion, and that sadness is an obstacle to being happy, and that we should concentrate all of our emotional and cultural energy on trying to eradicate sadness so that everyone can be happy.



Disney, which owns Pixar, is itself an integral part of this mindset. Since the 1950s it has sold its theme parks as "The Happiest Place on Earth" and made films (some simplistic, others very sophisticated, at least in terms of their design and storytelling) that present happiness as the end goal for the hero or heroine.



Don't worry, be happy. Chase the blues away. Smile, darn you, smile. Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street.



As a clinical depressive, I was especially grateful for the film's message.



I've made some terrible decisions out of sadness but also some very smart ones, and in each case, sadness wasn't the only operative emotion: there was also anger, joy, fear, maybe some disgust, and probably a lot of other emotions that aren't represented in the visual scheme of "Inside Out." As Walt Whitman says, we are large and contain multitudes. A big part of learning to listen to yourself is realizing that you shouldn't just listen to one emotion. Just as it's possible to hold two seemingly contradictory points in your mind at the same time, it is possible to listen to two seemingly contradictory feelings, and you might draw a better conclusion as a result.



It took many years of therapy and intensive reading of books about therapy and psychology for me to understand that it's not only normal to feel sadness as a default emotion, but that a lot of meaningful and even important art has been made by people who were definitely or probably depressed a lot of the time.



We used to have a different word for them: melancholics. As in melancholy.



It never occurred to me until I began exploring my own emotional interior that I was a depressed (or melancholic) person by temperament, and that my generally affable demeanor was a reaction, even overreaction, to the sense that I was not normal, that sadness was not normal, that sadness was a thing standing in the way of happiness, that it was somehow shameful and destructive. Thus the unending push for happy endings in films, TV series, books, even for stories that really shouldn't have them. Thus the parents and grandparents telling little kids, "buck up" or "let me see that smile" or "Why so sad? It's such a beautiful day out."

