Hypothesis

I bet there are several 5-year-olds who were able to figure this one out before me, but I still think it's important to jot down. 

Something worth noting when it comes to sadness is that it isn't necessarily the opposite of happiness.  Things are never as simple as "Happiness is to good as sadness as to bad".  I was informed recently that during the last time I was truly happy - the same time in which the first available entry on this blog appears, late summer 2009 - I was considered (apparently ubiquitously) a douchebag.  My reformation from douchehood also apparently coincided with the onset and increasing severity of my depression.  At first I thought that this was because people like me more when I'm miserable, even though misery isn't a face I wear - it's a burden I bear, alone.  This may or may not be a sad reality - I don't know, as I am not going to ask anybody (and even if I did, they'd deny that they get off on my self-imposed suffering) - but that's a standpoint that even I know is void of any serious value, despite the fact that my brain tends to warp events into the belief that all people, especially myself, are terrible.  No, the most interesting part of that revelation comes from me reviewing my life at that point in my life.

Back then, I was a lot less self-centered.  I would hardly know if it weren't for two things: 

1. The contents of this blog reflect my primary concerns at the time of their publishing.  They were a lot less focused on me than the more recent bitchfests have been.  
2. If I were truly less self-centered, I'd be less self-conscious/self-aware, and vice-versa. (I don't like the fact that they're synonymous but self-consciousness is always a negative trait and self-awareness is always a positive trait.  Oh well.)  I was definitely less self-aware than now if I couldn't recognize that everybody thought I was insufferable. 

Anyway, this sort of reflects my answer to the questions: "Why do I remember sadness but not bad times?" and the corollary, "Why do I forget happiness but not good times?"  Happiness is actually to good as sadness is to bad, it's just a bit more complicated than that.  We remember sadness because all it is defined by is relentless introspection, to which my last few entries can attest.  We are so fascinated by our own unhappiness to the point of being masochistic, we're so self-centered.  That's the same reason we don't remember bad times, too - we're so wrapped up in our own heads we experience life completely detached from the experiences that are often a significant cause or reason behind the sadness. 

I've operated under the somewhat misguided belief that all humans are self-centered for a while, but the corollary regarding happiness relies on the opposite being at least somewhat true.  If my happiness two years ago coincided with diminished self-awareness, that would explain both why I remember/documented all the events that took place then and why I forgot the sensation of being truly happy.  It's not because we're content with where we are and have nothing to complain about that we don't document our happiness - actually, right now, I feel like if I were happy I'd want to shout it out from the top of the Empire State Building or something - it's because we're so much less self-absorbed that we don't bother to try to intellectualize it or "focus on experiencing ourselves" to the full extent.  We focus instead on experiencing the world around us, because life is more worthy of analysis and deconstruction than ourselves when that is true. 

However, in order to defend the perspective that all people are self-centered, it's because all people are unhappy.  I wasn't kidding when I said we have a fascination with our own sadness.  I don't think there is much more to add to that other than "Blame TV, Facebook, etc. for that".  Anything that fuels our own self-absorption is a source of misery.  Now if only TV and Facebook weren't the two things I spent most of my time doing besides sleeping... (sleeping is also a pretty self-absorbed activity, too.  And even then it fits into my hypothesis pretty nicely - we don't remember the experience of sleeping but remember and constantly long for the sensation.)