Origins of Sadness

So I took a little walk and was thinking a bit about emotions.  What is the point of having emotions?  Some emotions I think are kind of relics of days before we were really sentient.  Jealousy…Fear…they have clear reasons like ensuring the dominance of your genetics or getting away from something life threatening.  As a clear proponent of evolution, I think that all facets of the human being need to provide an evolutionary edge.

Then I thought about sadness.  What point could that possibly have?  I watched a show a while ago about a family of elephants and when a baby elephant died, it was ridiculously clear that the mother elephant was sad.   What’s the freakin’ point of that?   Wouldn’t it be more advantageous for the mother elephant to immediately become sexually aroused by the death of her offspring and go reproduce?  I know that sounds stupid, but that makes sense to me from a continuation of your genetic material perspective.  But no, the elephant seemed to grieve.  Huh.

Humans…how do they handle sadness?  Some wallow in it and let it consume them, some use it to help drive self improvement.  Many people are a mix.  To me, it seems that sadness is just another way of separating the strong from the weak.  There’s the old saying "that which doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger," right?  So, within reason, in a large group of people that suffered a serious of tragedies, those that can cope and flourish will rise to the top while those that can’t will accept their own destruction.

I am wondering what our species would be like if sadness didn’t exist.