With her first book, Quiet, author Susan Cain spent the better part of the past decade shifting society’s perception of introverts, shining a positive light on a previously overlooked and undervalued group. This year, she published her second book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow And Longing Make Us Whole, which once again shifts society’s perception, demonstrating that melancholy experiences are not to be avoided, but rather acknowledged for the value they offer.
Americans in particular have been conditioned to push away pain and put on a happy face, something we can blame on the promise of “positive psychology.”
But in Bittersweet, Cain demonstrates why letting in negative emotions rather than ignoring or repressing them can be beneficial. Cain explores the psychology behind this concept through interviews with experts and a retrospective take on some of her own life experiences. She asks readers, “Why do we sometimes welcome sorrow when other times we’ll do anything to avoid it? Now, psychologists and neuroscientists are considering the question too, and they’ve advanced theories: a moonlight sonata can be therapeutic for people experiencing loss or depression.” She notes the experience of something as simple as listening to sad music can be transformative because, “It shows us we’re not alone in our sorrows.”
Cain has a suite of tools dedicated to helping everyone tune into their Bittersweet nature - a TED Talk, a quiz, a course, and an upcoming podcast. I spoke to Cain about how people can apply the Bittersweet tradition to one of life’s most shared, and often one of the most difficult experiences, how to persevere through setbacks.
Susan Cain
Amy Shoenthal: You hint at the concept of working through setbacks in your book, but how can we find the sweet in those difficult experiences? Can setbacks be bittersweet?
Susan Cain: There are different categories of setbacks. Some are just unqualified negatives where something happened in your life that you didn't want to happen. And then there are the setbacks where you realize you were upset at the time, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to you. Others fall somewhere in between.
One setback I had was when I had been working like a maniac at a corporate law firm for seven years, trying to make partner. When I found out I wasn't going to make partner, I went very quickly from bursting into tears and feeling like my whole life was collapsing to realizing it was the best thing to happen to me. I was suddenly set free. And as you know, it’s what enabled me to ultimately become a writer.
Shoenthal: What do you think it was that allowed you to work through that process so quickly?
Cain: I think it's a combination of the fact that I really was never meant to be a lawyer and that I had wanted to be a writer since I was four. I felt obligated to pursue a “safe” career where I could support myself, but once the decision was taken out of my hands, I was suddenly offered permission to explore other options.
When people have a dream of pursuing a creative career or starting a business, the advice that's usually given is, oh, you should just go for it. But I think that's terrible advice. The reason I was able to make the transition I did is because I had savings from working as a lawyer. I also set up a little freelance business so I could pay my bills. It’s really important to always have a plan B and to have a way of paying the rent.
That’s what allows you the mental space to recover from the setback and pursue the actual dream. Our culture gravitates towards the more dramatic narrative of leaving it all on the line, taking a big risk and watching it pay off. I just think that's bad advice.
Shoenthal: You just used an interesting word: permission. In this cultural moment, do you think people are starting to give themselves more permission to explore their passions?
Cain: I think anytime things get shaken up out of the normal course, that can inherently be an opportunity. So yes, I think that this is a moment of opportunity for people who might want to be making changes, career-wise. I don't think we know yet how it's shaking out. I don't have statistics to prove this but my instinct is that there are probably a lot of people right now thinking about following creative career directions.
Shoenthal: Your famous quote from Bittersweet is, “Take your pain and turn it into your creative offering.” But I want to dive into one of the other quotes in your book when you said, “they didn't come to enjoy their misfortunes, but they learn to live with insight.” I thought that was so poignant because when we talk about what you can learn from setbacks, we're not trying to glorify pain. How do you think that can be applied to our current moment? How is that bittersweet?
Cain: We have a very all-or-nothing view of what's happening. We either think things are going well or things are going poorly and those are the only two options. Right now we’ve been in a phase where more things are going wrong at the societal level. But it's natural for things to go wrong, and it's natural for things to go right, all simultaneously.
Nobody likes to feel sad, including me, who wrote this book. Nobody likes the bitter side of life. Nobody likes to feel pain. Intrinsically, we don't like those things. It's just that those things are going to happen. We have no choice about that. So the question is, what do we do with that reality?
One lesson this bittersweet tradition teaches is that we can turn that pain into something creative. I define “creative” very broadly. An act of creativity doesn't have to be a painting on a wall. Cooking for your family is a creative offering.
Another thing we can do is turn that pain into some kind of connection. Almost never are we the only ones suffering a particular type of pain or sorrow. It's almost always shared, if not universal. After 9/11, a lot of people signed up to be firefighters. And with the pandemic, there were a lot of people signing up for medical school and nursing school. A daughter is killed on the highway and her mother starts Mothers Against Drunk Driving. There's something in the human spirit that meets adversity by trying to heal the same wound in others. That's why we have the archetype of the wounded healer. It's a way of healing our own pain.
Shoenthal: That’s true. And it reminds me of another quote of yours that I love, which is, “Compassion is the product of shared sorrow.” But how do people work through their pain to get to that place of meaning, and even productivity?
Cain: What happens in those kinds of moments is that the externalities get ripped away. You have the setback, and now the life you were striving for no longer is. We could see that as, I'm sitting here amidst the rubble, or you could see it as – there are a lot of open skies right now.
Research scientist Dr. David Yaden, cognitive scientist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman and I collaborated on a Bittersweet quiz. We found that people who score high on the quiz, meaning that they're prone to a bittersweet state of mind, also score high on measures of creativity, wonder and spirituality. There's something about being aware of the impermanence of life. Those people tend to see the gap between the world we long for and the one we inhabit. And that connects us. This is why I advise that we should tune into the bittersweet, even when the building hasn't actually collapsed all around us. To just be aware of the fact that we live in this world of joy and sorrow helps build resilience.
Shoenthal: To that point, I want to ask you about a very personal experience you had to endure if you’re comfortable sharing. When you lost both your father and your brother to Covid, were you already working on the book and were you able to process those experiences through the work you were doing?
Cain: I don't mind talking about it. I think in the shock and immediate aftermath of such an intense emotional earthquake, it doesn't matter what kind of work you do. The book didn’t matter in those moments. But once I emerged from the immediate earthquake and was looking at the rubble around me, that’s the period where all the work I had been doing on the book was incredibly helpful. I was just so attuned to the way that this is part of life.
The writer Nora McInerny talks about the distinction between moving on and moving forward. She lost her husband at a very young age, and she felt like everyone’s advice after a period of time was just, “Move on, move on.” But anyone who has worked through grief knows that you don't want to move on. You don't want to leave behind the person you love. But moving forward is very different because it acknowledges that you're going to carry that person with you always. You don't have to leave them behind. She has since remarried. But she says that the wife she is now was informed by the marriage she had with her lost husband.
I see that in my own life. I think of my father all the time. I constantly hear music that he introduced me to. My kids will do something and I'll think, “Dad would have loved this.” You get through a period where you're not crying every time you have that thought, but it is the new way of carrying the person with you and integrating them into your new life.
Shoenthal: That's beautiful. I would stop there, but I have to ask, as we conclude, what’s next for you? What can readers expect your next “creative offering” to be?
Cain: Other than writing, my creative offering is the Bittersweet course. I found something incredibly intimate about speaking words out loud that reach people in their ears early in the morning. I'm curious about exploring that more. That's why I am also creating a podcast that’s set to air in September 2023.
But when I say creative offering, I also mean it in those smaller, daily moments. You could be having dinner with your family, or it could be a way of seeing the absurd in life and making the people around you laugh. Creativity just means having an awareness of the places where you can inject a little beauty, humor or kindness into the world. We all have ways of doing that.
