The pursuit of unhappiness

I recently was honored when my friends asked me to visit their radio show and play my own… I recently was honored when my friends asked me to visit their radio show and play my own countdown. On the show, they usually reveal their choices on air for themes like the “most American songs” and “best songs to play any other day than Valentine’s Day,” while verbally battling it out to see who is the best at picking the most apropos soundtrack for the show.

The theme for my guest appearance: best tearjerkers.

Now, let it be known that I am a bit of an expert on tears. I would even go as far as to say that I am a master of melancholy. A scholar of sorrow. A connoisseur of cloudy skies.

Basically, I know what it means to have the blues.

And since I’m totally melodramatic, one of my favorite things to do is embrace despondency and run with it. Having a good soundtrack is crucial.

So in my search for the perfect tearjerkers, I whipped out all the classics. Some old jazz, some Motown, a little New Kids on the Block and, of course, the weepy folk singers and their acoustic guitars who love to sing brutal, heart-wrenching songs that immediately get picked up for six or seven movie soundtracks.

I laid out my initial playlist to be whittled down to a manageable number. But I realized something a little worrisome: I was feeling nothing. Not even the inkling of a tear. Not even an itch in the eye! I guess it takes more than a few nights of crying into your pillow to understand what makes a real tearjerker. In order to do that, you have to really dig, have to delve into the deepest fathoms of your soul and have to come back up with your still-beating heart clutched in your cold, cold hand. And then you have to laugh at your heart for being so weak.

This was going to be a little more difficult than I thought.

But even though I didn’t exactly know where to start my search, it seemed to me that the moment a sad song struck me the most was when I was feeling the happiest, as if a reminder that even though my life was just dandy, those happy moments are unique and measured. In a way, it’s the happiest moments in my life that make me feel the saddest. So I decided to start from the opposite end. I picked a few of my favorite things:

1. Sunshine in the late afternoon

2. Really good vanilla ice cream

3. Whiskers on kittens

I decided to indulge myself. I sat in my kitchen when the sunlight comes in through the window just right, and I brought out a pint of the best vanilla ice cream I could find. I even put an adorable picture of a kitten as my computer wallpaper. You know, the one with the kitten dangling precariously from a rope with a caption that says, “Hang in there.” So cute!

Then, I put on my absolute favorite songs.

It so happens that most of these songs are fairly upbeat in tempo. However, many of them have bittersweet themes. Like remembering the pleasant moments of a love affair that’s gone sour. Or a song about a couple, brought together and then torn apart by their lives as government spies. And the more I listened to these songs, the more I realized that good things fade.

So it would happen that when my playlist had run itself through about three times – curse you, loop button! – I was completely and totally immersed in debilitating sorrow.

And as I lay there, immobile in a pool of melted vanilla ice cream, with my whiskered kitten screensaver blinking mercilessly in the dark – the sun had completely set but I was emotionally unable to turn on the lights – I came to a very important understanding: It’s all fleeting.

Pretty sunlight turns into dusk. Kittens turn into cats, which are totally lame. And worst of all, eating a pint of vanilla ice cream, though yummy, gives you a seriously uncomfortable tummy ache.

I had just become a pathetic mess in the face of all things pretty and pleasant in the world.

And yet, after I finally drew myself up from the ruins of my emotional exploration, I felt strangely refreshed. And I thought, maybe the happiest moments in my life are not those in which I am sitting at a sunny table, but rather, those in which I’ve realized that life goes on even when things are completely normal. In fact, not only does life go on, but also sometimes it can be good – even sans delicious dairy treat. And think about it: If all moments were perfect in life, there’d be a total disequilibrium, and the second things weren’t sweetness and light, we’d lose it.

Armed with this new enlightenment, I re-attacked my task of picking the best tearjerkers. And I’m pretty satisfied with my list.

Want to know what Cassidy picked? E-mail Cassidy at cassidygruber@gmail.com.