“Sad”

Dictionary definitions can have a certain irony to them.

Commonly, instead of explaining anything significant about the words they attempt to capture, definitions give us lifeless descriptors, or worse, technical synonyms.

Let us look at the word: ‘Sad’

“feeling inadequate, unfortunate, regret or showing sorrow; unhappiness”

Taking the word ‘sad’ as a self descriptor, most would agree that it’s function is to signify a specific experience or state of being. In this case, when looking into the meaning of a self descriptor, it is important to ask whether we are after it’s technical usage (it’s definition), or the heart of the experience it signifies. Evidently, this definition of ‘sad’ helps little in capturing the experience the word points to, shifting the burden of explanation to a list of synonyms.

Though, all this may be asking too much (or the wrong thing entirely) from a dictionary, and so we would be wise to find a better witness in prose or poetry:

“Sadness is the dull ache which extends to and from me into everything, robbing thoughts, objects and my experiences of their core substance. When I feel sad, things lack meaning; everything has suddenly and thoroughly become empty.”

It is worth noting how intuitively most people connect the word  “empty” with the experiences of sadness, even though it is far from its definition or any synonym of the word.

Of course, this is not an attack on dictionaries, a naive treatise to replace definitions with poetic prose, but to point out the obvious fact, that alone, they can do only so much. Clearly, we must rely on experience as well, but, it is here on this very same point (and in an apparent contradiction to what has been written so far), that dictionaries can actually provide profound insights. This is to say, if we use dictionaries as they were intended, not only as collections of words and their definitions, but also as accounts of their origins and evolution, we can explore new ways to relate to the experience words signify.

To put it simply, exploring etymology can provide novel insights into the experiences that words attempt to capture.

Earlier I had explored the experience of ‘being sad’ in poetic prose. This culminated in the word “empty”.

That is, to ‘be sad’ is to ‘feel empty’.

Interestingly enough, the etymology of the word ‘sad’ reveals that it once literally meant:

Having had one’s fill; satisfied, sated.

What a contrast!

The experience of ‘sadness’ is to ‘feel empty’ yet originally, to be sad literally meant ‘to be full’.

Great!

Let’s use this original, technical definition to redefine the living experience of sadness:

The ache which empties the world within and around us, transforming life into dull space, is not a want of meaning, but meaning satisfied. Our feelings of lack are mistaken as emptiness, but in reality, these feelings are experiences of fullness. It is here, when we have ‘had our fill’ that we are tasked with the passive process of digestion, of reflection, where meaning reveals itself in  weighty contemplation rather than the flight of levity, only beginning to lighten after a proper (metaphorical or literal) dump.

This is all to say, can we not reframe our sadness as functional and meaningful, rather than dull aches of pervasive lack?

It’s etymology suggests we can. And if this is so, what does this say about the power of human contemplation? Where else can we apply this practice of  intelligent juxtaposition of language and experience ?

But, perhaps the most pressing question is simply this: Where the hell is the nearest toilet ?