Covid-19: Your sadness is valid - even if you're better off than someone else

A lot of us are pretty sad at the moment. It's often said that comparison is the thief of joy. I wholeheartedly agree, and I'd also go further and say comparison is also the thief of sadness - and that is equally, if not more, dangerous.

It is very common to invalidate ours, or others', sadness, by comparing the situation to those who are worse off. For example, the lockdown we are currently experiencing has been frequently compared to the Second World War - and the comparison is almost always used to urge the reader to be grateful it's not worse. Getting perspective is one thing, but using one situation to infer that the genuine difficulties of another are not legitimate is at best irrelevant, and at worst, damaging.

Restricting our need to grieve has become more widely understood as an issue that can cause serious mental health repercussions down the line. Bottling our emotions up inevitably results in them exploding at some point later: whether that's directed at ourselves or to others. We know all this, and it's become far more accepted that emotions need to be explored and felt, but we still struggle to give ourselves permission to mourn the mundane.

What do I mean by that? It is unquestionable that somebody who has suffered a great loss or trauma should be completely validated in their suffering and it's not often that people argue with that. But when it comes to the everyday sorrow, we're less practised at giving space and weight to our feelings.

As I've discussed before, we live in a broken world, where sadness cannot be eradicated (at least not yet), and is an intrinsic part of life. We know this, and yet we resist it. All too often we use the blunt tool of comparison to try and lever ourselves out of a funk. Are our children exhausting? Well, at least we have some. Are we experiencing loneliness? Well, at least we have a house to be lonely in.

As with many fallacies, there is a twisted truth in this. Sometimes gaining some perspective is entirely necessary and relevant in finding emotional healing. We are all familiar with the scenario of a small child (or even adult!) who is given an array of goodies and still manages to throw an almighty tantrum over the one tiny detail that isn't quite right. In this case, drawing their attention to the grander picture is clearly essential - and a pretty regular occurrence in this household.

But there are plenty of sources of sorrow that aren't, and shouldn't, be relegated to the status of 'minor detail', and instead need acknowledging. And ironically, it is only when we acknowledge that it's okay to feel sad about these things that we can truly have a fuller perspective on the situation, because we aren't attempting to obscure part of it with a false positivity.

I'm a big fan of the Disney movie Inside Out which is a great illustration of how all our emotions are necessary. The character Joy spends the movie pushing her colleague Sadness stay well away from their girl, Riley's, emotional control panel; she believes the goal is to only allow joyful experiences and memories into her life. In excluding Sadness, she ends up short circuiting Riley's whole emotional and psychological system so she can't feel anything at all, let alone joy. Joy finally realises that some of Riley's happiest memories have come in the wake of deep sadness, because it was those moments of sorrow that allowed the warmth and joy of human comfort to enter in. If we squash sadness down, we disable the full range of emotions that we need to access in order to fully function.

Another more practical rationale for why comparison is a false way to deal with sadness is that once you start, where do you stop? It's one thing saying "lockdown is really tough, but at least I have a warm house to live in and food on the table", but taken to its extreme, there's always going to be someone who's worse off than you, meaning that using this methodology, no sadness is legitimate. One wouldn't address someone who had just lost all their limbs in a bomb blast with the truism, "at least you have a beating heart".

In terms of the Christian faith, I also think it's important to note that if we don't acknowledge difficulty and pain we cannot rejoice in God's goodness and comfort to us in hard times. If we spend our lives trying to con our hearts into thinking there's no need to ever grieve, we shut them off from receiving God's help. He calls us to acknowledge our weakness and need for him, because he wants to fill our broken hearts with his grace and love. We also need opportunities to show each other love and help, as human beings and as Christian brothers and sisters. We may find it hard to ask for help, but we all love to help somebody else who needs it. To be human is to live in community. If we deny the everyday struggles of that community, we deny the need for each other.

So the next time you feel the weight of life's burdens, you don't have to make excuses for your feelings. Own them. Give yourself permission to grieve. God's waiting to help you, and so are your people. After all, Jesus wept, and so can we.