Emotional Music Appreciation for the Blues

Our familiar friend, melancholy.

Not precisely the guest we invite to parties or tag with Instagram captions, but one who always finds their way in, unannounced and unfashionably honest. Melancholy is the minor chord in our symphony, the smoky jazz note of our inner soundtrack. It is sadness, yes, but with dignity, like showing up to a heartbreak wearing a velvet jacket and quoting Shakespeare.

Society, bless its heart, prefers its emotions like it prefers its coffee, light, sweet, and ready to power a Monday morning meeting.

We are generally encouraged to chase happiness like we are greyhounds trailing a decoy rabbit around a racetrack.
Project positive vibes only.
Proffer smiles like currency.
We downward face our dogs to the “Good vibes” sign painted on the yoga studio wall in pastel.

While everyone else clinks glasses and manifests abundance, melancholy sits in the corner, nursing a cup of black tea and contemplating the futility of it all. Not bitter, just honest. Not dramatic, just aware.

And, melancholy is not a broken heart. If our pillows still smell like somebody that we used to know, that is a very specific sorrow with a labeled landing pad.

Melancholy can’t get under someone to get over something. That ‘something’ is existential, and no amount of localized high blood pressure can rhythmically make it vanish, though we still might try.
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The feeling can also easily be mistaken for his ambulance-chasing, low-rent attorney brother, depression, who fabricates weak cases and seeks lasting self-incriminating judgments. Alternatively, melancholy is more inclined to mediate disputes through settlements, agreeing that what happened was an unavoidable act of God. Knowing the difference can be a boon or bust for a therapist, pharmacist, or bartender.

Melancholy is the syrup in our streams when we admit that life is, more often than not, a slog through the mud in shoes that weren’t made for walking.

It’s realizing that the world is brimming with random foolishness, that greed tends to win the popularity contest, and that our dreams often require a part-time job and a therapist. Melancholy is that quiet knowledge that relationships are complicated, careers are exhausting, and no one knows what they’re doing with their retirement plans.
Yet, somehow, we persist.

The brilliance of melancholy lies in its offer of equal opportunity. It doesn’t unfairly target the unlucky or the oversensitive. It taps all of us on the shoulder eventually.

It’s that sensation when we realize we’ve wasted time, that we could have loved better, listened more, or not joined that pyramid scheme in college.

But rather than turn us into bitter, hunched-over gargoyles of self-loathing, melancholy says,

“Yes, that was unwise. But also, welcome to being human.”

This emotional hue permits us to stop pretending that everything is always okay. Because it isn’t. And pretending otherwise is the emotional equivalent of putting glitter on a flat tire.

Melancholy whispers a truth: suffering is not a glitch in the system. It is the baseline.

It’s in the fine print of every birth certificate that reads, “Life is hard.”

Yet there can be an alchemy achieved here between the mournful notes. Because when we allow this feeling to play its quiet ballad, we become softer, more humane. We can stop taking everything so personally. Our regrets feel less like failures and more like shared verses in a tragic comedy that stars all of us.

We only seem to become truly compassionate once we stop believing that our pain is unique. And, once we realize everyone else is also silently screaming into pillows, we finally make room for kindness.

So, let’s not exile melancholy too quickly.

Let’s give it a prominent place on our emotional playlist. Shuffle its seemingly baleful melody right between joy and rage, somewhere near nostalgia and just left of yearning.

Let it play so we can listen. Certainly not to wallow, but to remember.

To absolve ourselves for wasted time.

To embrace the shared ache in all of us.

To cease demanding that life be easier than it is, and instead, love each other for how hard it has already been.

Because melancholy, in all its ragged, poetic truth, does not weaken us. It readies us. To focus on what truly matters while the music is still playing.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.