2 posts tagged “human nature”
I had a thought today that stopped me cold and broke my own heart.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the nature of loneliness. The 'lately' is a bit of a misnomer, but how long I've been thinking about it doesn't really mean much in the context of this post... it could be that I've always being exploring this idea, but for the most part it has been a feature of my thoughts for the past several months.
The move to SF was in large part directly related to these thoughts on loneliness that were an inherit part of my life in chucktown. In many ways I have found, in SF, budding connectivity and the beginnings of some wonderful friendships that would abate, if not placate, my loneliness. And previously I had blamed much of these feelings on my lack of friends and personal relationships... but now I am forced to face the very real probability that my loneliness may have less to do with what surrounds me, as it does with what makes me up.
It would be a bit pretentious of me to claim, one way or another, the quality of my heart. But, that being said, my ego would never be satisfied if I didn't engaged in a little self reflection from time to time. And there is a melancholy that almost always accompanies this process of self reflection and it is most probably indicative of my general demeanor or perhaps even my character. But whether I am plagued by meloncholy and as result feel lonely frequently or plagued by loneliness which leads to meloncholy changes little about my propensity to be swallowed up by moments of hopeless cheerlessness.
None the less, in 1621, another smarter, better read, more eloquent man than I, mused on the nature of melancholy:
- Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or in habit. In disposition, is that transitory Melancholy which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dulness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing frowardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy, that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill-disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free, no Stoick, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well-composed, but more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality. . . . This Melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, a serious ailment, a settled humour, as Aurelianus and others call it, not errant, but fixed: and as it was long increasing, so, now being (pleasant or painful) grown to a habit, it will hardly be removed. -Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy
