The Season of Melancholy

it's okay, I'll be fine

Summer's inferno has given way to cool mornings and breezy evenings, and I'm not complaining.

Damn, it was hot for a while. As much as I love sunshine (read: natural light), I don't handle heat very well. I also don't tolerate cold. I guess I don't like extremes, and I seem to be fussier about them as time goes on.

I need the sunshine's vitamin D, but I prefer not to feel like I'm going to pass out from heat exhaustion after walking around town. And no, it's not because I'm out of shape (ha-ha, very funny).

With summer waving good-bye, but not, I predict, without an encore mini-heatwave before we settle solidly into autumn, I've found myself feeling both excited by the change and also down about a summer spent mostly at home, waiting. Waiting for what, I don't know.

Waiting for the virus to go away, waiting to feel inspired to take public transportation, waiting for the right time/day/temperature to do whatever it is where I need those things to be perfect.

I feel that life is passing me by.

Am I Allowed?

I have so much to be grateful for. I live in Portugal and am somewhat insulated from the disaster that is the U.S. That in itself makes me feel like a lottery winner.

Yet I'm sad. I'm so sad (sad is definitely not the right word) about the fires raging in my home state of CA and my adopted Pacific Northwest. I've lived all over Oregon from north to south, twice, and even in Washington state for a minute. I know the towns that have been devastated, and I have family and friends in all these places. The West Coast is burning, and my heart is breaking.

How dare I feel low when all the important things seem to be going to hell?  

That's what I'm struggling with this week. How is it I feel lucky, happy, grateful, and, at the same time, disheartened and depressed? Am I allowed to feel miserable, knowing that I have clean air to breathe in a safe and welcoming country, and I don't have to worry about being bankrupted by healthcare costs?

Am I allowed to feel blue when by all accounts I have no right to do so? But more than the blues, it's this lingering melancholy that saturates everything—like a tea stain that won't wash out.

Melancholy's Insights

Melancholy is not unhappiness, nor is melancholy a problem to be solved. Perhaps melancholy is a state worth cultivating for the access it provides to the world's vulnerabilities.

Melancholy is an awareness that life is hard, but so lovely, especially in its fleetingness. It's an awareness that none of this matters, yet it still matters enough to keep going.

It's not the oh-poor-me of the self-obsessed, but a profound perception that we are all struggling, and in this knowledge there's tenderness for the sorrow around us.

We'd do well to consider melancholy with a bit more charity and welcome it in when it appears, as it has many insights to share if we get quiet enough to listen.

Do you find these emotions exist at once within you sometimes? If so, how do you handle them?

GOOD LINKS:

• The case for never buying new clothes again

  Changing the way we think about clothes is a revolutionary act.

  Apparel is among the most polluting and exploitative of all industries. It creates 93.7 million pounds of waste each year and relies on the sweatshop labor of millions of people around the world, while Big Fashion tycoons rake in billions.

• How Much of Your Body is Your Own? This is fun, check it out—I’m 13 lbs. hydrogen!

• On Feeling Melancholy. A little video from The School of Life.

—> If you enjoy life: examined you can let me know via buy me a coffee (yay, coffee). Thank you for your support—it keeps me writing!