A number of years ago I noticed that I would listen to baroque music when I was feeling happy and to more modern, introspective, brooding compositions when I myself was introspective and brooding (though not necessarily when I was feeling modern.) In recent weeks, even months, I notice that I have been listening almost exclusively to modern -- read relatively tune-free -- music.
If my earlier observation holds, this should indicate that I have been toying with gloom and depression. It has been difficult for me to find meaning or purpose in much that I do, and I spent the end of the summer in much more of a funk than usual. In fact, that is a big part of the reason I started this blog.
My wife has told me recently that a number of friends think I should see an analyst. These are all people I have not seen or talked to for months, people she has told about how (she thinks) I feel. In other words, their advice is based on her perception of my psychological state. I tell her that I would be a different person if I could live with all the pollyannish formulas she thinks I lack, not a writer, not the person she wanted to live with in the first place.
I have always thought I needed some tension in my mind between the world I live in and the world I want to live in. I would not be the person I want to be if I could attain the Buddha-like acceptance to go through life with a smile on my face. In fact, I tend to distrust permanently smiling faces. They seem to me to serve as filters, repelling a large part of the universal human condition, including pain, disappointment, loss, and change.
I believe we create our own heaven and hell on earth. I also recognize that my lot is probably the envy of 99% of the human race. I have never lacked the freedom to choose my own way in life; I have never been homeless, impoverished, unclothed, hungry, imprisoned, oppressed, or maimed. Nevertheless, I remain in counterpoint to my surrogate father, who, as he lay dying, described himself as a cheerful realist.
I do not so easily put myself into a box like that. I would not describe myself as a cheerless cynic, and I cannot imagine that anybody who knew me would use those words to describe me.While I am no more inoculated against denial than the next person, it does not remain my refuge for long. On most days, I am grateful for the privileged life I have led.
Nobody's life is perfect. It is part of our psychological make-up to be aware of something we do not have. We can always find somebody to envy, some other condition that seems better than our own. For most of my life I have been in touch with people who thought they did not have enough friends. I have few friends and little sense of community with any group of people. In that respect I am analogous to Herman Melville as described by his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne: neither believing nor comfortable in his unbelief. I am not a joiner, though I sometimes feel that close friends could add a rich dimension to my life.
Family and community keep many people from focusing on themselves and becoming morose. Professional grandparents and incurable do-gooders are insulated from the effects of large-scale disasters by focusing their attention on the grandchildren or the latest local cause. When I think of these people, my image of them has a permanently smiling face.
My general attitude about the human condition -- economic, political, and environmental -- is something I have chosen. I did not move toward pessimism years ago and then find myself drawn into it whirlpool-like. I am not a pessimist. (The image of Richard Nixon saying "I am not a crook" just passed through my mind.) I would love to listen again to The Magic Flute with the enthusiasm I now give to Mahler songs and Shostakovich symphonies. I would love to find myself dancing to music again instead of using it to move back into myself. But I trust in myself, and I have recovered from even deeper gloom in the past without an analyst, so I believe it will happen again.
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