Push on the door, jiggle the handle, look for a key, whatever. I’ve resolved to keep my ear pressed up against the door and wait, even if it hurts. Perhaps, at best, we hear his footfall as he comes up to the closed door, feel his gaze through the wood. It isn’t abstract, this sense that we are side by side with God but we inhabit two different rooms. Your living room is empty, the seat where your friend had been is vacant. Melancholy feels like being near a person you love very much, always in each other’s presence, and then that person gets up and leaves. This tension is where life yields its utmost, its beauty, creativity, and passion. That’s the struggle of melancholy, but also its strength. It’s a birth pang of the life beyond this one. We cannot chase the desire for the infinite out of our hearts. Love always returns, in some way, to the giver.Ībove all, Guardini says that melancholy is a sign that God exists. Knowing this, it only seems right that I strive to be part of the solution. Melancholy makes me sensitive to the need. After all, what I desire so strongly must also be desired by others. What I’ve realized is that, when I feel as if I am not loved, the first thing to do is give love away. Melancholy can be experienced as a strong desire to form a meaningful bond of love. Even suffering creates new rooms in the heart, new places for us to exist. I’ve come to learn, though, to deepen my glance at the world, to look again. I used to find myself particularly affected by a desire to experience beauty, but always upset that life can be so ugly. Pain at the transience of life is still with me, but now it directs me toward a higher reality, daily reminding me to seek Heaven first and earth second. The frustration of experiencing the beauty of life only to have it slip from your grasp, he says, “is the impulse for something spiritual.” Melancholy causes a renunciation of self and creates a willingness for the old to be left behind so something more noble may arise.ĭissatisfaction with myself transformed into motivation to keep seeking beauty, strengthen my prayer life, and rest in the presence of God at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. He leaves behind the frustration of melancholy and in the second half of his essay focuses on its positive meaning. Guardini is helpful in helping me understand exactly what happened. That’s where the story could have ended, but then something strange happened – I struggled my way toward the Catholic Church where, after my conversion, my melancholy deepened and became a source of strength. The frustration of that, the vague realization that God is in this world but does not make a permanent home here, caused despair. But the fullness of it was always just around the next corner, out of reach, veiled. I was confident that life is a wonderful and mysterious doorway into the sacred. I read book after book of philosophy late into the night, trying to figure out my vocation, how to know God, how love God, how to love myself. Melancholy paralyzed me when I was a younger man. Guardini writes, “the person seeks something, seeks it everywhere and passionately – something that he cannot find.”Īs a card-carrying melancholic, I can attest to the above. “It rests like a weight,” he says, and makes a person feel as though he, “no longer can master his life.” Melancholics feel exposed and vulnerable because navigating a meaningful life seems so complicated. It’s all in how we handle it.Īs Guardini mentions, it can feel painful, like a heaviness of spirit. Every temperament has its own strengths and weaknesses. Like all the temperaments, melancholy is neither good nor bad, neither a blessing nor a curse. I don’t think melancholics necessarily must be sad, but I can see how the connection is made, because it’s certainly true that melancholics are sensitive, introverted, empathetic, and predisposed to quiet introspection. A melancholy person has a darkness in them, which is why melancholy is associated with sadness or depression. The Greek word melankholia is a combination of melas, meaning black, and khole, meaning bile. It doesn’t take long at all to recognize a melancholic. That science today might be described today as “iffy.” but the four temperaments still have value as basic descriptions of how different people process emotions and new information. These temperaments were based on what were thought to be the four humors or bodily fluids.Įssentially, he thought our patterns of thinking can be connected with conditions within our physical bodies. In the 2nd century, a Greek physician named Galen described four temperaments – melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, and choleric. Would you consider donating just $10, so we can continue creating free, uplifting content? Make a Lenten donation here
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