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That feeling you get when listening to sad music? It’s humanity. - Harvard Gazette
Susan Cain’s new book explores how bittersweet view of life can lead to creativity, connection
Susan Cain prefers to poke around the less-examined corners of can-do America. In 2012 she published “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking,” which became a phenomenon and made the congenitally less chatty among us fashionable and even cool. The 1993 Harvard Law School graduate’s new book, “Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Can Make Us Whole,” has become a New York Times bestseller. The Gazette spoke with Cain about how embracing the poignancy of life can lead to creativity and connection. The interview was edited for clarity and length.GAZETTE: What does it mean to have a “bittersweet” state of mind?
CAIN: It has to do with the awareness that life is a mix of joy and sorrow, light and dark, and that everything and everyone you love is impermanent. I first experienced this state of mind when I would listen to sad music. All my life I had this mysterious reaction to sad music; it would make me feel a sense of connection to the people who had known the sorrow that the musician was trying to express. At first, I thought it was just me, but when I started my research, I realized that many musicologists have been studying this because for a long time many people have had this reaction not only to music, but to other aspects of the human experience. There is a deep tradition across the world and across the centuries of people experiencing this higher state of mind that comes from an awareness of fragility and impermanence.