Why You Enjoy Being Sad ► Explained With Dark Souls

Have you ever enjoyed being sad? You’re not depressed, but part of you kind of likes thinking negative thoughts to bring down your own mood. You enjoy laying in your bed crying, listening to But I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo. You’re not incapable of feeling happy, but these days it just feels like you prefer sadness. But what kind of person wants to feel sad? You might think something is wrong with you, that you must really hate yourself inside, and that’s why you

Keep making yourself sad. But I don’t think that’s the case. I’ve been dealing with this weird feeling of enjoying sadness for probably more than like 10 years now, and I know it’s going to sound a little crazy, and you might not even believe me, but nothing helped me understand my emotions more than this game called Dark Souls. So, why do we enjoy being sad? Well, in order to figure out the answer, we first have to look at this character in the game, the

Crestfallen Warrior. In Dark Souls, the Crestfallen Warrior sits at the safe area of the game called Firelink Shrine. He’s undead, like you, and that also means that he’s on the same path as you, brought back to life to go to the First Flame and use your body as kindling to keep the Age of Fire going and save the world. Well, actually, he’s given up on your shared duty. He knows what he should be doing, and he

Knows that someone really should get it done already because it will be for the better of everyone once the First Flame is linked, but he just doesn’t feel like he can handle it. The journey is filled with too many unknowns. Instead, he retreats to comfort. He sits and waits, and he even gives you some pretty good advice for advancing on your journey, but he only just tells you what you should do rather than doing it himself. And that’s part of how our

Sadness feels. Sadness is Firelink Shrine. Sadness is comfort. Let me explain. Have you ever picked out a really sad movie for yourself? You think like, “Oh, yeah, this one’s going to make me cry. I’ll save that for later.” Why do we do that? It’s not that you want to make yourself depressed, but you want to feel that kind of deep emotion while you watch that really, really sad movie. It’s almost comforting. It’s the same thing as when you lie in bed at night

And you think of sad scenarios where you imagine you died, and you get sad thinking of everyone’s reaction to your death. When you participate in these kinds of forced sadness, it’s kind of comforting because you can feel your sad emotions, and it’s actually like a little fun to imagine these fake scenarios. Somehow it feels good because you’re choosing your sadness. You’re in control of it. And on top of that, sadness is romanticized these days in media. It’s cool to be sad and

Depressed. Somewhere along the way, we started believing that being sad means you understand life more. The funniest comedians all have a traumatic past. The most impactful authors of all time are all scarred from their life experiences. Even the music we listen to, it glorifies sadness to a point that it makes it look so awesome and intellectual, and actually makes you want to be sad, too. Sadness has become comfort. Sadness has become an escape. Sadness has become the cool thing to do.

You want to be sad, even if there’s nothing to really be sad about. In Dark Souls, who knows what could happen on the journey to link the First Flame? Joy or anger or tiredness? And we don’t know how to consistently deal with highs and lows like joy and anger. They’re too tough and unfamiliar, so we retreat into sadness before anything else even has the chance of happening. We prefer sadness because we can control it, and we think it’s cool and good and

Intellectual. Even being happy feels like dangerous, like you’re waiting for some kind of consequences for feeling good. But sadness, I know exactly what to do with that. That’s familiar, and that’s exactly what the Crestfallen Warrior represents in Dark Souls. Choosing the familiar Firelink Shrine over going on a journey because the shrine is familiar and the journey is not. Choosing sadness over literally anything else because sadness is familiar, while everything else feels unpredictable. But sadness can also be a

Defense mechanism. If you stay in that comfort long enough, sadness doesn’t just become a place you go, it becomes how you deal with everything. And we actually see this happen to another character in Dark Souls. Siegmeyer of Catarina always finds himself running into obstacles. He reaches a gate, and it’s closed, and so he just sits outside waiting. He waits standing outside a door that has a bunch of black knights behind it because there’s simply too many for him to deal with alone.

Siegmeyer is not a very sad guy. He’s actually quite the opposite. He’s a very charismatic, bright, and humorous person. But it’s the way he uses familiarity as a defense mechanism that resembles our enjoyment of being sad. When something in front of him poses a challenge or some kind of unfamiliarity, his default method to deal with the problem is to just wait it out. That’s what he does best, and every time we find him in the game, he’s just waiting

For someone else to come and solve his problem for him, open the gate, kill the enemies, pave the way forward. It’s only once someone else comes along and actually takes care of business for him that he can continue on his journey, too. He lives kind of a luck-based life. He waits for other people to solve his problems. And kind of similar to real life, sometimes we look for other people like friends or media like Dark Souls or sad movies to explain our

Feelings to us, or we result in a default response anytime anything bad happens to us. It’s like we’re telling ourselves, “If I stay sad, nothing can hurt me more than I’m already hurting.” Because if I never expect anything in the first place, then I won’t be disappointed. Sadness becomes a refuge, the place where we can wallow in our emotions without facing the unpredictability of the outside world. If we choose our own struggle, then we can’t be affected by a struggle that’s

Unfamiliar to us. We would rather stay sitting there like Siegmeyer, daydreaming and imagining fake scenarios in our head because that’s our default, and that’s easier to do than actually taking some action and going into the unknown. Sadness, just like Siegmeyer’s inaction, can become our default response to stress in our life. So, it’s not necessarily that you enjoy being sad, but sadness kind of protects you from everything else, a defense mechanism. But what if you don’t want a

Defense mechanism? You want to be strong and brave, and you don’t want to retreat into sadness whenever things get tough. What if you’re ready to become the kind of person who doesn’t seek to be sad all the time or romanticize it? Maybe you don’t actually enjoy being sad. You just don’t want your pain to be meaningless. I want to tell you about one more thing that happens in Dark Souls. All that you really need to know

Is that a knight called Artorias sacrificed himself so that others would be safe. In particular, he saved his wolf, Sif. But just knowing this part of the story, it made me wonder, why is it better that Artorias sacrificed himself and didn’t just run away from the fight? Why does it seem more admirable to die fighting for something than to just live a long, quiet life? Some people have this fantasy, this obsession even, of dying in battle. But why? I

Think it’s because to them, it gives them meaning, a reason to fight, a reason to endure pain and sadness and suffering, and also a reason to die for. There was a meaning behind this person’s life, and I think that’s all anyone really wants, isn’t it? To mean something to someone. And I think that’s what we’ve been deep down trying to do the whole time. We are giving ourselves meaning in a way, but it’s like fake meaning. I don’t mean to

Say that the things you think about and the reasons you’re sad in your life are meaningless. I understand that even if they are just thoughts in your head, they can be very real to you individually. And I’m not just saying that your problems are fake, all right? I mean to say that even if the sadness in your head is really debilitating for you, they’re not actually reality. We might see the story of Artorias and Sif and think like, “Wow, that was really

Sad.” And then we imagine ourselves in that same kind of situation, and we get even more sad. Because, yeah, the story on its own is pretty sad, but now that you’ve put yourself into that situation in your head, now that you’re the main character, it’s given the story a whole new meaning because you know all your past experiences, and you know all the people in your life, and you imagine how they would react. Those kinds of thoughts can make

You cry, but they didn’t actually happen. The sadness made you sad, and it might have even changed who you are on the inside, but it’s not happening in the real world. And that brings me back to why I think people are obsessed with dying in battle because it’s the same kind of thing. We yearn for meaning, but we never take any action, so we’re forced to make up that meaning and fantasize and romanticize it in our own heads. So,

What does this actually mean for you and me? What should we do now that we know this? Stop trying to create meaning through feeling. Start creating meaning through action. The next time you catch yourself laying in bed imagining those sad scenarios, you don’t need to force yourself to stop it because at this point, it’s kind of a habit to indulge in the sadness. Instead, I want you to just notice it. Be aware that you’re currently making yourself more sad,

Changing your mood by continuing to indulge in this thought that isn’t even real. It just happened to me today, too. I get thoughts all the time that lead me into sadness. It’s okay for it to happen, but just be aware of your thoughts and emotions and where they’re taking you. Then, after some time of just being able to consistently recognize when it’s happening, instead of going deeper into it, do something small in the real world. Stand up, go

For a walk, just get back to your work instead of procrastinating by daydreaming with sadness. Real meaning doesn’t come from what you feel or how deeply you feel it. It comes from what you actually do in reality. Even just something small is more real, more meaningful than anything you imagine just in your head. You don’t need to stay sad just to feel like your life means something. Sadness is not all that gives life meaning. If you want your

Life to actually mean something to you, then you have to start living it outside of your head. Anyway, I think that’s all I have to say for today, guys. If you like Dark Souls and self-improvement, I have a new free community that you can join. It’s just going to be the link in the description. I also have a new course that’s like how to genuinely fix your life, but explained with Dark Souls. So, if that sounds interesting to

You, then that’s also going to be linked in the description. As always, no pressure for either of them, but I just think that if you’re watching this video and you want community, you want to stop feeling sad all the time, then I feel like you’re the kind of person who would do good to join my community. So, just it’s there if you want, all right? Take care, guys. Don’t you dare go hollow.

But, I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo.