Thinking about this

 I guess I'm going to have to do a link, rather than link the video, because it's on Vimeo instead of YouTube, but this came across my Bluesky stream last night and I wound up thinking a lot about it and posting it.

 It's based on a short essay by Alain de Botton: 

On Melancholy

Unfortunately, the original print version of the essay has been taken down, but there are a couple sites that quote bits of it.

Essentially: melancholy is part of the human condition. It's a realization of the imperfection of life, that there's pain. People you love leave or die or reject you. Beautiful things are often fleeting. 

And yet, the point is not to become bitter, but to acknowledge it. Maybe it's related to the idea I've read about called "radical acceptance" (in dealing with, for example, grief over loss: you recognize you cannot DO anything about the loss or the pain it caused, so you just kind of have to sit with the grief.)

And I think there's some truth in that. I've seen people who dealt okay with grief - I think at this point, while I still miss my dad, I have - but I've also seen people who's life was absolutely destroyed by it. In some cases it's several big losses all at once (I am thinking of someone I slightly know who lost her husband, her son, and a sibling in very short order, like within a couple months) but also in some points it may be that the grief becomes......well, it's like the joke about "they made it their whole personality"

 I do think I recognize what the essay talks about. "Life is inherently difficult, and suffering is part of the universal experience" and I see that and I feel it. One thing I do struggle with is finding the joy, sometimes, in among that. 

"The world is full of folly and greed, and it's hard to find inner peace....often sadness simply makes sense."

I think one of the problems I have now is I often see how things could be *better,* except they aren't and I don't have the power to make them so. The large number of empty storefronts in my town that could be useful or enjoyable businesses so that we don't have to drive an hour's round trip (or do mail-order) for things. The lack of fun social opportunities that work for me (and for many people). The idea that some people who would have plenty to share to make others' lives a bit less uncomfortable choose not to, even though they might not miss what they would donate. The fact that beauty can be hard to find and is often damaged or co-opted. The fact that it is hard and terrifying to forge a relationship with someone, and that it may wind up not working out, and your heart gets broken.

There are so many sad things. They are things, more or less, everyone experiences. And yet, if we all have the experiences of grief and disappointment and loneliness, why is it so hard to reach out to others and to help them? Or so hard to accept help when offered. 

I don't know. I am alone far too much in the summer (especially this year when most everyone was away off campus somewhere else, and a lot of days it was me coming in and working from maybe 9 until 4 on my research without speaking to anyone else, and then, when I get done, being too tired to think of doing anything social, even if there were something). And so I do get kind of up in my head and that makes me *more* melancholy.

But yes. There are difficulties in life. Sad things happen. And I guess you haven't much choice but to accept it. But I also wish sometimes joy was a bit easier to come by