Let’s hear it for – Melancholy !

Ahhhh Melancholy – one of my favourite words. Mel-an-choly. Mel-an-choly. It is a line of poetry, a stanza in itself. So less depressing than depression. An interlude rather than a condition. An adagio rather than a grave. “Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad” said Victor Hugo, and as the writer of Les Misérables, I guess he knew something about it.

When we are in a state of melancholy we feel the irresistible gravity of sadness, pulling us down. Melancholy seduces and binds with soft bonds. It is not violent nor aggressive, but rather persuasive like an old friend, an old lover, our mother. We return to it as we return to a favourite comforter, to a half-drunk bottle of wine, to the left-overs in the fridge. “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again”.

Melancholy drags us away from the world, from work, from things, from people. We…