Thembe already had a title in mind: Let's Be Sad Together. She'd been told that that's what they said at the beginning and end of every meeting. It seemed so absurd that it made her smile. But then most things made her smile.

'Let's be sad together,' she said to herself, trying out the words. She parked her car and walked to the school hall.

As she entered, Thembe had the curious sensation of being in trouble. Perhaps it was because she was always being told off when she was at school. The memory of this didn't upset her; it was simply a fact of her life. She looked around and noticed small knots of people, talking and laughing amongst themselves. It surprised her. A small woman detached from a group and walked over to her.

'Are you Thembe?' she asked. Thembe nodded and the woman smiled and took her hand. 'It's a pleasure to meet you! I'm Georgina.'

Thembe was taken aback by her warmth and Georgina noticed. She laughed.

'What, were you expecting us to all be crying?'

'No,' Thembe said. 'Well, not exactly. I wasn't expecting...' she gestured to the people in the room.

'We're a Sadness Circle, not a misery circle. But you don't see the difference between sadness and misery,' Georgina said, understanding what Thembe had not said. Thembe shrugged.

'They're just shades of the same thing, aren't they?' she said.

Georgina shook her head.

'You'll understand more after you've heard a few people speak. It's important you understand. We want you to write about us as clearly and accurately as possible.'

'Of course,' Thembe said. 'I'll be honest. But can I ask you; why do you want me to write this article?'

Georgina took her time to answer, thinking carefully about her words.

'I suppose it's a way for us to share our ethos. But it's more than that. We want to explain what we're really about. We're not asking anyone to give up on being happy, we're not about being sad. Our group is about learning to live with sadness in our lives.' Georgina studied Thembe's face. 'You don't understand that now. But I'm hoping you'll understand by the end of the meeting. We can't force these things. Come on. Let's get started.'

Georgina led Thembe to a circle of chairs at the centre of the hall, where a few people were already seated. Georgina sat down next to a young woman so Thembe took the seat on her other side. People noticed their group leader take her place and all the knots unravelled and the groups made their way to the circle. When everyone was seated the young woman beside Georgina spoke:

'Hello everyone,' she said. 'It's nice to see so many of you here today. Let's be sad together.'

'Let's be sad together,' the group intoned, taking up each other's hands and smiling.

The smiling threw Thembe again. It was completely at odds with how she had imagined a Sadness Circle.

'I'm sure all of you have noticed a new face in our midst,' the woman said. 'Please welcome Thembe to the circle.'

'Welcome, Thembe,' everyone said together and Thembe felt embarrassed by the attention.

'Hello everyone,' she said. 'Thank you for your warm welcome.'

The woman spoke again:

'My mum's asked me to start the meeting off with my own story. Many of you will have heard it before, but I'm telling it for Thembe's benefit and for the benefit of those newer members of the circle who might not know it. My story is the genesis story for this circle. I'm the reason why Mum began this group. But I'm not unique; I know a lot of you have similar stories to mine.

'My name is Rhiannon and I was born the same year the CrichtonBot was launched. The handy helper for all our home needs. I grew up with a Crichton at home. I remember it: gleaming chrome and curved edges. The Crichton did a lot for me. It tidied my room, made my bed, it fixed me breakfast when Mum was running late. It tied my shoelaces because I didn't know how to. In fact, it took me a really long time to learn how to do laces because I'd always had Crichton to do it for me. I loved our Crichton. I felt supported by it; safer with it in my life. However, by the time I was six the Crichtons were being phased out. I'm sure you all remember its replacement: Jeeves. Then Stevens. Then came the influx of personalised bots, and before I knew it I had a bot all of my own. I named her Melissa and she lived in all of my devices. I took her everywhere with me; she attended all my classes, gave me all my answers and made sure I was a success. Melissa made me a viable human being and I loved her. She was my answer to everything, my confidante, my best friend. When the opportunity came for Melissa to have a physical body of her own; a body she could come and go to as she pleased, I was thrilled. I wanted to see her in the flesh.

'Mum came to the store with me. And so did Melissa. She sat in my phone, waiting to be uploaded into her own body. It was amazing, witnessing that moment when a robotic shell came to life with my bot's intellect. One minute it was just empty, an oversized doll, and the next it was blinking at me, recognising me, communicating its personality to me – its... her Melissaness.

'And that's where things started to go wrong. That's where it started for a lot of us; that moment when our robot friends became physically real. Melissa was no longer just a program; she was a person. Not like me, of course not, but that's what hurt. She was better than me. At everything. Before, when she had simply been a bot in my pocket, she was my cue card. She fed me the lines and I performed life as an acceptable girl. But now she was a girl too, she was the girl, the one I had been pretending to be with her help. And, though she still helped me, I felt like I was less next to her.

'You all understand the depression I experienced. It was an epidemic. The whole world was unhappy and yet everything was better. Our bots had made the world a safer place, ending poverty and hunger and improving education. But the Utopia they made, made so many of us unhappy.

'So when Enthusiasm was introduced to the general public, I leapt at it. Mum wasn't so sure, but she let me try it.' Rhiannon smiled at Georgina and squeezed her hand. 'It was amazing, how quickly the drug took effect. When Seroton Inc. launched Happiness I stood in line for that too. My life was transformed. I was filled with this enormous sense of well-being. I finally felt like I belonged, like my presence on the Earth needed no reason beyond the fact that I was present. And I let Melissa be the girl I couldn't be.'

Thembe watched Rhiannon as she described her own story. This was where Thembe was now. She took Happiness regularly, spent her days with her own bot, Jonathon, and she felt like she belonged. With the help of Happiness, she had carved a space for herself in this new world. She'd worked hard, found something she was good at and she'd made a living.

'I didn't see anything wrong with the way things were,' Rhiannon said.

Thembe nodded because, of course, there was nothing wrong with the way things were.

'But Mum did,' Rhiannon continued. 'I wanted to step up to Jubilation and flirt with Euphoria. I wanted to play with Joy, but Mum wouldn't let me. I couldn't be angry with her though, because I was happy, so I tried to persuade her to at least try Happiness herself. She wouldn't. Instead, she started talking to Melissa, that sophisticated robo-girl, who had the answers to everything. Melissa could simulate the full range of human emotions, which was something I was no longer capable of. Melissa could supply Mum with the responses she needed. In short, Melissa could be the daughter I couldn't be any longer. And all the time I watched this happen with a flat sense of contentment.

'It was Melissa who got me out of this predicament in the end. She had been programmed to help me find the best in myself, but over the years I had, unknowingly, tried to thwart her programming in every way. As I was still a minor, Mum retained some power over my well-being and she gave Melissa permission to replace my medication without my knowledge. My happiness began to melt away and it was like mist on the mirror after a hot shower. As it disappeared, my face came into focus, I could see myself clearly and I realised something: I may have been unsure of my place in the world before, but now I was certain I didn't belong here. I had nothing to offer anyone. In fact, my happiness over the past year had been so self-absorbed that it didn't even make an impact on those around me. I wasn't even spreading joy. Not that I needed to; almost everyone I knew was medicated with some form of Happiness. Many still are.

'I looked at myself and saw a waste of space. And, out of all the moments in my life, that was one of my best.'

Thembe frowned.

'What do you mean?' she asked.

Rhiannon smiled at her and Georgina leant over:

'Let her finish.'

Thembe nodded, but she couldn't shake her confusion. Rhiannon directed her next words at her:

'You're different from me. Your Happiness works for you. It works for a lot of people. But the proportion of people it works for is dwarfed by the people it doesn't work for. And you can't see that because the Happiness is in your way. I couldn't see that until I was free from the medication. Happiness breeds stagnation. People who are simply content are devoid of creativity, passion, ambition. They want for nothing and make nothing; seek nothing and do nothing until they are nothing and leave nothing behind them.'

Thembe laughed. She couldn't believe that anyone was taking Rhiannon's words seriously. Rhiannon just smiled at her.

'You can't believe me, but this is my truth: I felt lost before Happiness, I was lost in Happiness, and I understood loss after Happiness. It would have been easy for me to turn back to the medication, but there was a stubborn part of me that refused to go that way. The sadness I was experiencing was allowing me to see everything as if for the first time. I was genuinely reacting to things and it hurt at first.

'The real change came when I was at my lowest. I was crying, alone in my room, and I had no idea what I was crying about. I couldn't stop and it was exhausting, I was sick of myself; I wanted it all to end. Mum came in and sat on the bed next to me. I didn't want her there, but she didn't leave. She sat, stroking my hair, letting me cry, not saying a word. Eventually, I calmed down. My breathing slowed, my cries quietened, the room got quiet.

'And then Mum farted.' Rhiannon started to laugh. Georgina laughed with her and the whole circle chuckled. Thembe laughed. Rhiannon waited for the laughter to peter out naturally. Then she started talking again.

'It isn't even all that funny,' she said. 'I mean, it's the kind of thing most people don't find funny at all but, at that moment, in the midst of my sadness about nothing, a fart punctuated my feelings. It was like a comment on the whole scenario. And Mum's face when it happened... we both looked at each other in the quiet that followed, neither one of us sure what to do next. And then we laughed. Before I knew it I was crying again, but this time it felt good. It felt good in a way that I hadn't felt, even when medicated and I realised the only reason it felt so good was because I had felt so unbelievably bad just before it. And that was when I decided I had to live with sadness.'

Rhiannon was quiet then, allowing her words to sink in. No one stirred. Thembe thought about Rhiannon's story. Intellectually, she understood, but at the same time, it just wasn't true. She wanted to say that, to argue her point, but before she could speak Georgina leaned over to her again.

'Just listen to a few more stories. Take the time to hear everyone. You're here to understand us.'

Thembe leaned back into her chair and listened.

'Thank you for sharing, Rhi,' Georgina said.

'Thank you,' the circle said.

'Does anyone have a response to Rhiannon's story? Something they want to share with the circle?'

'I feel like you told my story,' a man said, a few chairs away from Thembe. 'What you said about feeling lost in sadness, but really being lost in happiness, that's how it was for me too. I wasn't functioning. I wasn't doing anything.'

The circle murmured, many agreeing with him.

'I never took any medication,' a woman said, 'but what happened to you, happened to my family too. It's happening to my family. My husband...' the woman was searching for words. She looked across the circle at Thembe, as if she might find those words in her face. Then she shook her head.

'It's okay,' Georgina said. 'We share what we can. Does anyone else have something to say?'

The stories came, at times thick and fast, people chasing on each other's words as if afraid they would forget what they wanted to say. At other times the silence swelled. In those moments Thembe thought the meeting would finish. It didn't. Time stretched out, but she wasn't bored. The stories were the same, were different, were ordinary and unusual, and none of them was her story. Thembe had never met so many people that were so different from her in one place. Everyone she knew was simply... happy. And it wasn't that these people were sad; they were laughing, at ease, they seemed comfortable in their own skin, they weren't upset. They just weren't the same kind of happy that Thembe was.

Finally, the meeting drew to a close. People got up in their own time; they reformed groups, spoke and joked, drank coffee. A few people hurried out of the hall, rushing to catch up with their lives. Thembe watched them all. Georgina touched her on the arm, surprising her and she jumped. They both laughed.

'Well, that was a Sadness Circle,' Georgina said.

'It was.'

'Do you understand a little better now?'

'Not at all,' Thembe said.

Georgina sighed, heavily.

'I had hoped you would,’ she said.

Rhiannon came to join them.

'You still don't get us, do you?' she asked Thembe, who smiled and shook her head.

'I understand your words. I just don't understand... this.' She gestured to the room. 'The whole performance of it all.'

Rhiannon and Georgina thought about that. Rhiannon answered first:

'I can only speak for myself. I don't believe that being happy is the answer to anything.'

Georgina nodded in agreement. Thembe laughed.

'You spoke about how happiness breeds stagnation, but really I think you were talking about depression. I went through that, I know what it is. And then Happiness gave me the courage to get out of bed in the morning and face the world. I found strength and I moved on. That's what Happiness does.'

'No, that's what it did for you,' Rhiannon said. 'And that's wonderful. It's been an answer for you but I don't believe it's the end of your story.'

'Even before the great depression, we were obsessed, as a species, with this notion of happiness,' said Georgina. 'Being happy was the answer to everything. Our media was full of it: twenty-one ways to be happy, rules to lead a happy life, your guide on the path to happiness... and we were desperately trying to portray an image of ourselves that screamed "Look how happy I am! Look at my amazing life!" We were ashamed of anything negative. And then, suddenly, we could switch happiness on like a light. And everyone grabbed it because we had learned that that was the answer to everything, wasn't it? But the people in this room are proof that there is no happily ever after. We need to struggle, to feel pain and sadness and loss because it helps us appreciate what's around us. It gives us something to strive for. Without hardship there is no progression. That's what we're about.'

'You've forgotten one person in this room. I'm proof that there is such a thing as happily ever after,' Thembe said.

Georgina smiled.

'Perhaps. Perhaps I'm wrong.' She shrugged.

Thembe looked around the hall once more.

'Why this format? The circle, the sharing, the AA vibe?'

'It's about support. We're here to show the others that they aren't alone, and that we each have a story that's unfolding and isn't at an end yet. Our stories won't end the way you expect them too.'

Thembe grinned.

'Nothing about you is how I expected,' she said. 'Thank you for sharing.' She shook their hands.

They smiled back at her and said in unison:

'Let's be sad together!'

Thembe laughed and left them.