Why openness is strength, not weakness
In our culture, sentiment often gets dismissed. We praise toughness, stoicism, control. We admire the person who “never lets emotions get in the way,” the leader who never cries, the friend who always keeps their composure. Vulnerability is framed as fragility. Sentiment is mocked as softness.
But here’s the truth: sentiment is courage. It is not weakness to feel deeply. It is strength — because it takes far more bravery to care than to wall yourself off.
What Psychopaths Don’t Understand
Psychopaths, whose emotional circuitry is blunted, often see people like us as fools. Why? Because we accept sentiment as a reward in itself. To them, unless it can be touched, tallied on a scoreboard, or stacked in a bank account, it’s not a win.
What they don’t understand is that sentiment delivers daily reward: the inner satisfaction of loving our values, noticing beauty, laughing with friends, or feeling moved by a song. This “mere” sentiment gives us tingles of epiphany, moments of warmth, the sense that life is meaningful.
Without it, victories would be shallow. With it, even small things — a shared glance, a moment of truth, the shape of a melody — become paychecks of the soul.
The Root of Conscience and Morality
We could have no conscience without sentiment. Sentiment is what makes us care about right and wrong. It fuels empathy, justice, the desire to see truth prevail. It’s why we often choose to “rise above” what is merely pragmatic.
We care about more than outcomes. We care about goodness manifesting itself in the world. We seek the good for the same reason we create beauty in art and life: for the emotional payoff of meaning.
As Pablo Casals put it: “The capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.”
The Reward of Being Human
Our vulnerability to meaning is not weakness. It is the reward of being fully human. Sensitivity, comprehension, sentiment — these enrich our life experience.
If we lacked sentiment, our existence would be anesthetized, flattened into a reptilian state. As I mention in Life Savor, we’d live “as though we were lizards,” blind to the richness possible to us through caring about meaning.
Instead, “the finely tuned soul lives a richer life than the blunted one.” (Life Savor)
Sentiment Requires Courage
Why courage? Because to feel deeply is to risk hurt.
- To love is to risk loss.
- To hope is to risk disappointment.
- To savor is to risk longing.
But refusing these risks leaves us with nothing. A safe, invulnerable life may be pain-free, but it is also passion-free.
Beau Taplin put it bluntly: “Softness is not weakness. It takes courage to stay delicate in a world this cruel.”
A Scene of Meaning
Think of a parent dropping a child off at college. They smile, they wave, they stay strong. But on the ride home, tears spill. Those tears are not weakness. They are proof of depth. Proof of love.
A psychopath might scoff — “all you get is tears?” But to the parent, those tears are sacred, a distilled reminder of meaning. That’s what the blunted cannot see: that sentiment itself is payoff.
Sentiment and the Aesthetic Dimension
Human sentiment is not just raw animal drives like hunger or fear. It’s higher-order: feeling about the meaning of things. It’s why a poem or song can bring tears or goosebumps. It’s why a sunset can make us ache with wonder.
This is our emotional currency — the uniquely human way of cashing in on life. Sentiment is how appreciation becomes possible.
As Tal Ben-Shahar noted: “If you don’t experience painful emotions, you’re a psychopath or you’re dead. You have to give yourself permission to be human.”
Closing Thought
The courage of sentiment is the courage to be alive. To risk grief, disappointment, and longing — because the alternative is emptiness.
So don’t apologize for your tears, your tenderness, your goosebumps, your depth. They are not weakness. They are your greatest strength.
Because the lobotomy of indifference is not life. The courage of sentiment is.
