Have you ever experienced a state of sudden sadness without knowing the cause behind it? Do you have children who suddenly experience emotional withdrawal or showing a passive-aggressive behaviour? Is this behaviour a sign of a mental illness or emotional imbalance? Let’s take a look at Melancholy from the perspective of energy. In its purest form, melancholy is a feeling of sadness, gloominess or sorrow. Everyone has melancholy in their energy system but not everyone shows an obvious sign of great sadness. In its purest form, melancholy serves as a catalyst for creativity to flourish.
The challenge is that, we have a social construct to place melancholy as a negative and unhealthy expression of emotion. We try so many ways to make melancholy go away. We normally begin by giving reasons why we feel sad. With reasons, we give ourselves a way to ‘heal’ the pensive sorrow. What if melancholy does not require healing? What if, melancholy is the door that opens up new possibilities to the world?
Take moodiness for example. People feel moodiness as the result of feeling melancholy over emptiness in their life. The state of emptiness is just a result of the biochemical reaction that pulls us to experience something we are not familiar with. Being a human who deeply attaches to ‘having’, emptiness will bring such sadness to ourselves. Little that we know, that melancholy is helping us to discover what lies beyond the emptiness; which is our Inner Spirit.
Humans are creative beings. Our spirits are the creative source. When we allow melancholy to be, creativity can be produced in many ways. Music, poems and paintings are normally produced when in a state of emptiness. And creativity is not just that. There are many types of melancholy that produces highly creative results in science, art, politics, and sports and in many other areas of life too.
In the next issue, let us discover ways to deal with melancholy.