Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

In this chapter, Brown examines the seven places we go “when things aren’t what they seem” (68). She starts by pointing out that to be human is to have competing emotions and contradictory thoughts. She cites research that shows that leaving room for complexity gives us credibility and better understanding. Each of the seven experiences in this chapter happen when things seem contradictory or uncertain.

First, Brown defines amusement as a “pleasurable, relaxed excitation” (73). Amusement is different from other positive emotions because it includes an “awareness of incongruity” (73), for example, a punch line we didn’t see coming. It also makes us feel playful.

Brown next explores feeling bittersweet, the “mixed feeling of happiness and sadness” (74). She shares a few examples of this feeling from her research, like “watching children grow up, leaving a job” (74), etc. Feeling bittersweet is different from ambivalence, where we feel neither happy nor sad—bittersweet is both at the same time, or perhaps both are under the surface and we feel them as one emotion. This is related to nostalgia, which is feeling bittersweet combined with “a sense of yearning and loss” (77). Brown warns that unchecked nostalgia can harm individuals when it leads to rumination, which is like worry focused on the past.