Is Sentimentality Gross?

I started off thinking that really what linked these essay was sentimentality. I wrote a couple inspired by experience that I had had personally over the last couple years and then I started to think about what was theme, and the theme had to do with the way our culture is really wedded to certain ideas about taking meaning from experiences that might not necessarily be there. The idea that you have to be redeemed after some traumatic event or you have to learn a lesson or you have to come out a better person from a crisis. Hear what Meghan Daum has to say on the subject.