Melancholia: old word, new affliction

First published 20 March 2006

I don’t know when we retired the word melancholia, but I’m thinking it’s time we drafted the old girl back into active service. I don’t mean melancholia at its severest “woe is me” moment. That’s clinical depression.

What I’m talking about is a melancholia of kinder, gentler persuasion, that “oh dear” type of malaise that visits us all at one time or another.

In this sense, melancholia is a nice compromise between the extremes of happiness, which we’re all supposed to be in pursuit of, and medical depression, which sometimes seems the only alternative.

I wouldn’t mind having melancholia. It’s melodramatic enough to be interesting without being threatening. Melancholia isn’t terminal, contagious or really serious at all, and it’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t mind telling people about.

“My doctor says I have touch of the melancholia,” you might announce at a dinner party. “She’s prescribed a cure of two months in Italy or Greece with plenty of rest and fresh air.” Now, there is a cure I wouldn’t mind taking.

Melancholia would be that place just below normal. It’s not a condition, syndrome or illness. It’s just an umbrella under which to park those feelings we sometimes get in winter when the days are short, the nights long and everything is frozen solid.

Melancholia seems more natural than, say, Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. OK yes, Seasonal and Affective make sense, but disorder? Since when is it “disordered” to feel a little weary and despondent in the middle of winter?

Hint: Since they started marketing SAD lamps? And, for the record I do have one of these SAD lamps. Does it work? Well, I don’t know if it does what it’s meant to do, but I will say that it’s worth the price if for no other reason than the fifteen minutes you get to sit under it and do nothing.

But back to melancholia. I like the word because sounds nicer than “the blahs.” You don’t need drugs or treatment for melancholia because it’s a perfectly normal part of the human condition.

Melancholia is a handy term for that thing you get when politicians decide to drag you through a Christmas and January election. Thanks guys. It was a real blast.

It’s also a good description for the general feeling you get when you hear experts issuing warnings of a global flu pandemic without telling you what you’re supposed to do about it.

I mean, should we be building underground bunkers and stocking them with a year’s supply of food and water? Or should we be coaching our local bird populations to stay away from feathered foreigners and cover their beaks when they sneeze? Any information would be appreciated.

Melancholia also strikes when you hear about the looming catastrophe of global warming. Depending on the expert, we’re either “done like dinner” now, or we’ll be “done like dinner” in 50 to 100 years if we don’t do something – and do something big - this very minute.

The trouble is that I believe these folks. I really do.

But back to melancholia. Melancholia is what you get when you’ve just had a trans-Atlantic phone call with news that a brief acquaintance from another time and place, about same age as you, with kids around the same age as yours, and a lovely, lovely wife, when you hear in the phone call that this brief acquaintance has just passed away.

That’s melancholia. It’s not SAD or clinical depression. It’s just something that happens occasionally. I think we need melancholia back in circulation again. It’s a good word.

glethbridge@herald.ca

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