“And being so young and dipped in folly, I fell in love with melancholy…” Edgar Allen Poe

I often get sad around November; it’s not depression, but a kind of melancholy, which is different. Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.

I’m pretty upbeat these days, but sometimes it feels good to be sad; it’s cleansing, even purifying. It comes and goes, through the Equinox at least, usually into February and March. I’m an Olympic brooder.

Melancholy grounds me and never unsettles or frightens me. It’s like flushing the pain out of me by acknowledging and moving on.

It’s not natural to be happy all the time. And it’s not healthy either, I think.

I am uneasy around people who are always cheerful and upbeat and anxious around sad people all of the time and full of gloom and lament. Both extremes signal trouble down the road.

Melancholy is in the middle, the emotional geography in between.

Like many people, I feel melancholy all during the holidays, the darker days,  where the happy Disney, Hallmark, and Hollywood family image is forced upon us, so we will buy things for each other, even though that joy is far from the real story for many of us.

In the Corporate Nation,  truth is in short supply, but the marketing of the happy family is a big money maker. It’s a given. People do it. I think they don’t want to think about it.

Moviemakers are careful to give family stories with happy endings. Bad outcomes are taboo.

I think I feel disconnected during this period. I’m just not in the flow. But as I get older, I realize I am far from alone.

The holidays force a one-dimensional image on us – all forced joy or all loneliness.

I sometimes feel we are a nation of people eager to please their mothers but really anxious to stay home with the people we love and live with – our kids, spouses, and partners.  I’ve conducted my kind of survey this year about the holidays; I’ve asked everyone I know if they are happy spending Thursday with their families or excited about the official family holiday.

I have yet to find someone who says yes.

Most say it is their duty, something the mother wants – the whole family being together happily and in a spirit of love.

This is a lovely, even noble idea. But why does it often ring false to me? Am I just another cynic?

What is it about mothers that they are insistent, even in the face of wariness and regret? Why don’t they want their children to do what they want, not what we want? Why don’t we have a choice?

It hurts me that my daughter and her mother celebrate every Thanksgiving without me, hundreds of miles away. But why? Is it a reflex, or can’t I be honest? I don’t wish to be at a family Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t have that kind of family anymore, and I didn’t like it when I did.

This separation doesn’t hurt nearly as much as when I spent Thanksgiving with my family; it seemed the holiday was always about food and never really about family. It seemed more of an obligation to me. None of us liked it much, a place to stuff our faces and argue.

We always had an incredible amount of food but little love or connection. I thought most women had few outlets for their energy and creativity. Food was their power, their faith. Thanksgiving was their moment to call the shots.

Did I hear a mother on the radio lamenting the price of turkeys and Christmas trees this year? She really couldn’t afford it, she said, but she knew she had to do it or her family would be disappointed. Really? Is that what the family demands of their mothers – to spend too much money on them instead of buying something cheaper?

Lonely days. A nurse told me this week she is dying to go hunting with her husband, who she loves very much. But her mother insists they all come together.

Her family is loud and full of angry drinkers, she said. She hates it. She would so rather be home with her dogs and daughters. “But I’m going, and my daughters are coming too, whether they like it. That’s what my mother wants! We’ve got to make her happy.”

So to make her mother happy, she and her daughters must be miserable.

Another friend said she was going to travel to her boyfriend’s house. They argued all the time at Thanksgiving, but she didn’t care. “They weren’t my family!” Her mother, angry that she was going elsewhere for Thanksgiving,  demanded she travels halfway across the country for one day to have dinner and celebrate her daughter’s birthday.” It was the least you could do if you’re not coming here for Thanksgiving,” she said.

My friend said she didn’t want to go but was obliged to make her mother happy.

I might have a warped perspective – I often do.

I never could please my mother and always showed up for Thanksgiving dinner. She insisted her coleslaw was my favorite dish, even though it wasn’t. I liked it and pretended it was. I am spending the holiday with someone I love.

I never loved spending Thanksgiving with my crazy and dysfunctional family. Nobody cared that the holiday is fun or meaningful, just that we all were present.

This struck me as a kind of uncomfortable imprisonment of the spirit. I assume it is different for many other people. I hope so.

I’m not in that prison any longer. My parents are dead, and my siblings want nothing to do with Thanksgiving or me together.

I know I am happier being home with Maria this Thanksgiving than I ever was at my family’s Thanksgiving table. None of us dared not go. That would have been heresy.

Do mothers ever ask their families if they want to gather together for Thanksgiving? I’m not a mother, but as a father, I thought my task was to want my daughter to be independent and happy.

She can make her own decisions about family gatherings. I don’t make them for her.

Many loving families treasure this chance to be together and endure many sacrifices to be there.

Travel in America is expensive and chaotic. It is rarely fun or pleasant. Good for them. Some of my melancholy may come from the fact that I wasn’t and am not one of them. Is that jealousy, or is it sadness? Or just melancholy.

Perhaps this accounts for some of my gentle melancholy.

A rich brew of melancholy, joy, and gratitude. My special recipe.

I’m sad about what I have lost and don’t have. My family was destroyed by fear and anger, and I don’t love the dark winter days already upon us.

I love the color and the light, and I miss it. I am also challenged to find some. It doesn’t have to be a flower. A good photographer can find beauty everywhere if he or she looks for it.

I love the idea of reflective thinking.

The best definition of melancholy I know of is a kind of pensive sadness without any specific cause.

“I don’t know what’s worse: not to know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”-  Daniel Keyes.

As someone who aspires to make art, I remember Joseph Campbell’s observation that an artist’s purpose is to transmit color and light into the world.

Most people I know are affected by the light and the color around them. This, I have learned, is one of the reasons people love gardening so much.

Flowers bring all kinds of colors and all kinds of light. My photography is always an antidote to melancholy for me. My melancholy eases when I take a picture that others love or love. It tends to return in the dusk and melt away in the night.

I’ve suffered from anxiety and depression, but it differs from melancholy.

Melancholy is restful and thoughtful; it has a softness and ease. It’s not menacing or even disturbing. It feels as if I’m recognizing my humanity and acknowledging the sadness and struggle of my life and of everyone in the world.

There is some joy and healing, at least for me. I think I’ll feel melancholy on and off through the winter, and it will melt away in the Spring. The odd truth is that I find joy in being melancholy; it is honest and gentle.

Melancholy occupies the middle space between sadness and joy. I call it the Third Place.

Sometimes, when I meditate, I reach down and find the sad reflection inside me, far down deep, and usually out of the way.

But it is just as much a part of me as happiness and love, and I see it as a friend, not an enemy.

By sunlight, it is almost always gone.

I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling in the past, but life is complex, and there is pain and sorrow in any human life. I have made so many mistakes and had so many disappointments. There is suffering and sadness and anger everywhere, and there always has been.

I want to acknowledge that part of life without being consumed by it.

I will focus on my little ways, the small acts of great kindness.

For those of you who love and cherish Thanksgiving, blessings to you. I hope you find happiness and connection.

I know I will.

“I go to sleep alone and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I’m tired. I watch the wind play with the trash under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why does absence intensify love?”
― Audrey Niffenegger