My wife is very much the excited puppy when something good happens, or even just when I bring her a bunch of flowers or a chocolate bar. And I definitely love her for her expressiveness (among many other things), but we also honor that we each have quite different ways of experiencing and expressing emotions.

In a sense, it is a bit of a testament to our "addiction" to happy shiny feelings that so many people equate momentary sadness (which I might feel at watching the last rose of the season wilt in the garden) with a general sense of unphappiness. Just like the Inuit might have 30 words describing snow, so we might have many that describe a passing dark mood: sadness, ennui, despondence, sorrow, dejection, downheartedness, etc. Sometimes I ponder whether part of the reason I feel more in touch with these is simply that I am a writer and book editor and see so many words...