How to Beat the Blues of Melancholy

“It’s a brooding melancholy that haunts me.” – David Guterson

Melancholy gnaws at us in an incessant stream of negative self-talk. We are not happy because of something we perceive about ourselves or our lives. Our unhappiness builds up. After some time, we could also be masked from knowing even what our true issues are really about. We do not feel tip top because “something just does not feel right”.

Back years ago, I did not notice the presence of melancholy because it would usually lurk in the background. It hung like a veil with a dreary undertone. Consequently, I experienced a lethargy that drained me of energy.

I have since found out that melancholy can strike us more than we know. Some of us, perhaps, more than others. We wear melancholy in our face, a shadow behind our smiles.

Once aware of its presence, you become awake to the fact that you have been locked in a constant and pervasive stream of pensiveness. The dreary sense does not really go away. Like grey smoke that gathers in the form of a slithering snake, melancholy creeps back at you over and over again. It never leaves you long enough before it visits you once more.

“Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.” – Mason Cooley

At first, you may be tempted to brush it aside. You reason that everyone gets blue every once in a while. However, be aware that melancholy can be secretly potent. Gradually gathering strength, melancholy lures you into its lair.

As you dive in to uncover its secrets, you will realize that it is more than just hollowed sadness. The grey smoke gives way to an underlying stream of despondency. Suddenly, you become aware of the exact issues that have been sapping you of energy. As misery builds up in intensity for the afflicted, medical depression can set in.

“Depression is melancholy minus its charms – the animation, the fits.” – Susan Sontag

Awareness is a good thing. Or is it?

When you become aware, you are awakened from your deep sleep. However, in your awakening, you also become very conscious of the suffering that you are in.

It may not be just about your own personal troubles. You tune into the stream of suffering in the collective conscious. In an instant, you become very aware that humanity is afflicted by the same mental condition, robbing many of complete and true happiness.

“Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass state of mind that finds its cause wherever life is governed by production quotas.” – Gunther Grass

Probably, no one ever told you that happiness is a choice. Certainly no one ever told me this for a good part of my growing years. I eventually realized that even though love is our natural state, we still have to make the conscious choice for happiness. And so it is that awakening leads us to making that choice.

It is not like we need to be in the clouds the whole day. But clearly right here in the physical dimension, we need to make a firm decision to live differently especially if we have been in mental misery. We start by exercising the choice for happiness.

Beat the Blues of Melancholy

So, how can you rise above the stream of melancholy?

How can you remove the underlying brooding sense of melancholy that has been secretly and slowly robbing your soul of its joy?

How can you dissipate the shadows of melancholy forever?

I am not there yet but I discovered an answer that will beat the blues indefinitely.

Melancholy starts with the letter “M”;
The answer starts with the letter “M” too.

Happiness always,

Author. Adventurer. Life Coach. More About Me.

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