In Praise of Melancholy

Melancholy is not rage or bitterness; it is a noble species of sadness that arises when we are properly open to the idea that suffering and disappointment are at the heart of human experience. It is not a disorder that needs to be cured; it is a tender-hearted, calm, dispassionate acknowledgment of how much agony we will inevitably have to travel through.

Modern society’s mania is to emphasize buoyancy and cheerfulness. It wishes either to medicalize melancholy states –and therefore “solve” the problem- or to deny their legitimacy altogether. Yet melancholy springs from a rightful awareness of the tragic structure of every life. We can, in melancholy states, understand without fury or sentimentality that no one truly understands no one else, that loneliness is universal and that every life has its full measure of shame and sorrow. The melancholy knows that many of the things that we most want are in tragic conflict: to feel secure and yet to be free; to have money and yet not to be beholden to others; to be in close-knit communities and yet not to be stifled by the expectations and demands of society; to explore the world and yet to put down deep roots; to fulfill the demands of our appetites for food, sex, and sloth and yet to stay thin, sober, faithful, and fit.

The wisdom of the melancholy attitude (as oppose to the bitter or angry one) lies in understanding that our suffering belongs to humanity in general. Melancholy is redolent with an impersonal perspective on suffering. It is fill with a soaring pity for our condition. There are melancholy landscapes and melancholy pieces of music, melancholy poems and melancholy time of day. In them, we find echoes of our own griefs, returned back to us with some of the personal associations that, when they first struck us, made them particularly agonizing. The task of culture is to turn rage and forced jollity into melancholy. The more melancholic a culture can be, the less its individual members need to be persecuted by their own failures, lost illusions, and regrets.

"An Emotional Education", The School of Life.