In Praise of Melancholy

 

Though happiness is the ideal that we all love to chase, the fact remains that sorrow is the solid underpinning of human reality. There is no life without a touch of grief. The possibility of failure lurks at every bend along the road. There is no mountain, however alluring it is, without its due share of boulders and ravines that impede your progress upward.

Certain truths are painful but also inevitable. You can’t avoid them. You can’t escape them. For example, the truth that most people won’t understand you when you desperately need to be understood. There are times when you wish that at least your spouse understood you better. Your best friend will ditch you when you most need help. Have you ever noticed that loneliness is a universal phenomenon? You can feel lonely in the middle of a party. The realisation that the other people are grappling with their own shame and sorrow must have hit you like an enlightenment more than once. These are just a few examples. There are other sorrows, innumerable ones.

That is how life is. Sorrow is the unheard melody that holds up the entire orchestra of life. You can’t avoid sorrow unless you choose to live in some private sheltered little world. Like a ship that never moves out of the harbour.

The ship has to move out. It has to face the storms and waves.

With sobriety. With sober melancholy.

Contemporary philosopher, Alain de Botton, describes this melancholy as 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.”

Suffering and disappointment are at the heart of human experience. There’s no escape from them. A sober realisation of that fundamental truth gifts you melancholy. It gives your smile a strangely seductive charm.

PS. This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon.