As You Age, Is It Healthy To Indulge in Melancholy?
This happens to me every October
I live near the 45th parallel in the Upper Midwest of the US. (I mean that literally — there’s a surveyor's marker noting the point it crosses the landscape just a mile or so north of my house). It commemorates the halfway point between the equator and the north pole.
In this part of the northern hemisphere, this proximity means you live in the land of four distinct seasons. There are no mitigating ocean currents to lessen the impact of seasonal change. And no month embodies one of these seasons better than October.
If you live in one of these places you might already know what that means. The sunlight is dappled. It appears filtered as if someone screwed on a different lens. Outdoor smells are similarly muted. Humidity lowers. The wind picks up. Leaves ignite spectacularly and then rapidly fall and are tossed in that wind. A pervasive sense of change surrounds you and, unlike the transition from winter to spring, this change is touched by, dare I say it, death.
Joni Mitchell said this in Urge for Going about this time of year:
Now the warriors of winter give a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying all that lives is gettin’ out
See the geese in chevron flight
Flapping and racing on before the snow…
They’ve got the urge for going
And they’ve got the wings to go
This is why human snowbirds of a certain age flock to the southern US about now, racing ahead of the winter.
Inevitably during this time, I reminisce and contemplate. It’s almost chemical. And as I age I wonder if this is healthy. Remembering the past and thinking about the future this time of year naturally contains some thoughts of the end. It’s all around you and touches you in ways that someone in their twenties simply can’t understand. For those snowbirds, spending the winter in the land of perpetual summer, I suspect obscuring these thoughts is (unconsciously?) as much a motivation for migrating as escaping the snow and cold.
But, in living here you recognize that the melancholy that comes from reminiscence can be delicious too. You evaluate and ponder and with both comes an increased sense of gratitude and emotional perspective already shaped by the experience of your years.
Healthy or not I love it, God help me.
So I’ll press on, shoveling the sidewalk and cursing the snow (for as long as my health allows). And I’ll look forward to October, again.
