The power in embracing your sadness

Life Kit

NPR

Education, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Business, Kids & Family

4.5 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2022

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the U.S., there's a relentless focus on positivity. But as we all know, with life comes death — and with happiness, sadness. Susan Cain, author of Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, opens our eyes to the transformative power of melancholy.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is NPR's Life Kit.
0:01.8	I'm Shrine Marisol Maraji.
0:06.2	On this episode, we're gonna talk about harnessing
0:08.9	the power of melancholy
0:11.5	with best-selling author Susan Cain.
0:13.7	Her new book is called Bitter Suite.
0:16.0	How sorrow and longing make us whole.
0:19.0	The reason that I used the term bitter suite
0:21.4	rather than melancholy is because
0:25.6	in our culture, we have come to
0:29.1	conflate melancholy with depression.
0:32.4	We assume they're the same thing.
0:33.7	And in fact, they're very different states.
0:36.3	And I think of myself as a happy melancholic.
0:39.9	But I think when we hear the word melancholic,
0:44.1	we don't think that it could coexist with happiness.
0:47.6	According to Susan, just because our society
0:49.6	has misjudged melancholy,
0:51.8	doesn't mean it's devoid of its own kind of dynamism.
0:55.1	And she uses the mournful lyrics of her favorite artist,
0:58.7	Leonard Cohen, to help make that point.
1:01.2	The epigraph for the book is
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.