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Despondency never
disables anybody without his own consent--his own decision that it
shall. On the contrary, it can improve his understanding of what is
necessary and make him much surer in all he undertakes. It can
increase his moral energy. It can give him clearer comprehension of
other people. It can show a man how to fight without malice, and win
without boasting, and lose without bitterness. it can do these
things because his own spirit has been deepened--if he so wills it.
But let us try to find the simplest, clearest possible way of saying
all this: let us make it severely practical. There are many people
who feel gloomy today who have never made friends with sadness in
the past, and so are quite at a loss to know how to get along with
it. They are accustomed to live and work only from feelings of
optimism. How can we state the matter so that all will understand?
Fortunately, we can state it, I think, in a single sentence. When
you feel gloomy, put your gloom to work! Let me explain just why it
is that this is practical advice. Gloom is an emotional state, just
as mirth is, or joyousness. And emotion is a form of energy. Indeed,
at the human level, emotion is the one form that energy takes. And
energy can be put to work. Almost any kind of energy.
What energy do you suppose it is that gives to poets their power of
expression? It can be joy, of course. Many a sonnet is an outpouring
of rapture. But it can also be grief. Or just a bleak and deadly
melancholy. Some of the greatest poetry that has ever been written
has come from gloom. and not necessarily gloomy poetry, either.
Emotional energy, like other forms of energy, is convertible.
This is so at every level. The work done need not have the color of
the emotional energy that produced it. Gloom can produce other
things than pathos. It was Aristotle, I think, who said that
"melancholy men of all others are the most witty." There is no
doubt, I think, that the whole field of literature would corroborate
his opinion. Yet the wit is not all satire. There is nothing about
gloom that makes it inevitably corrosive. Any emotional
intensification can liberate energies of every sort--including the
most wholesome.
It is true that musicians, for instance, have often been morose--and
I think it is true--we have to admit, nonetheless, that their music
is not imprisoned within their moods. Even melancholy music exalts
itself beyond the level of mere gloom: or can do so. It is true that
such a piece as Tschaikowsky's Symphonie Pathetique luxuriates in
sorrow and is, to that extent, emotional indulgence. But it need not
have been so. Music need not stop at registering a mood: it can use
the mood to press beyond it--often into ultimate mysteries of
experience that are not translatable from music into any other form
of expression. It often seems to me, when I listen to a symphony,
that the composer begins with something out of the struggle of his
own experience--perhaps out of his own defeat--and in the weeks and
months of composing gradually transforms what he began with into
something universal and full of ultimate realities--yet victorious.
I am just as much aware as anyone of the extent to which this can be
a technical accomplishment, once you have mastered the trick; but I
am also aware that no amount of technical skill can achieve alone
what it takes emotional force to accomplish; and inasmuch as no one
can read the biographies of the great composers without knowing how
fearfully some of them were afflicted with melancholy, and sometimes
not of a very lofty order, it seems to me certain that what they did
was to employ their emotional energy--no matter what form it
took--to create their music.
So I say again, when you are afflicted with gloom, put it to work.
If you do not happen to be a poet or a musician (and it is not in
the least necessary that you should be), put your gloom to work in
what you can do. Remember that "only the duties of the heart can
truly console the heart." Don't luxuriate in gloom; don't make of it
an emotional indulgence; and don't think you have to wait until
something happens to make you feel more cheerful. Particularly, do
not make the mistake of trying to cheer yourself up with something
trivially optimistic. That only leads to exasperation.
When I feel gloomy, myself, I always pick out the most despondent
poetry I know, or the most melancholy music; and the specific
gravity of my own gloom is so much lighter than this dense
melancholy to which I expose myself, that it always floats upon it!
So that I feel comparatively buoyant. At any rate, I am then ready
to do some work. And if personal testimony counts for anything, I am
willing to admit that some of my most cheerful sermons have been
written out of moods of frustration or depression. There is no
difficulty about it at all. You simply give your mind to the work.
I am sure that this is possible in almost any pursuit. And you will
never end up merely gloomy. There may be a remaining element of
sadness in your mood--of one intensity or another--but there will
also be courage in it, and something that smiles--smiles back at
you--and at last, paradoxically, no small amount of buoyancy. The
most secure gaiety in the world, perhaps the only gaiety that is
really secure, is distilled from sadness.
Nor do I mean by this that the gaiety is qualified or forced. Quite
the contrary. Only those who understand tragedy really appreciate
comedy. If you find that too paradoxical, may I recommend you to go
down to the Lincoln Memorial some time, soon, and take a long look
at the face of the greatest of all Americans. If you know anything
at all about him, you know that he was the most melancholy of
men--at one time so much the prisoner of gloom that his warmest
friends wondered if he could ever be delivered from it. He never
lost his melancholy. The sadness of all human life, like the sadness
of his own great, tragic destiny, is deeply engraved in the lines of
his face. It is for that most of all, that without quite
understanding, Americans love him--and love him best. There is no
more tragic figure than Abraham Lincoln. But was there ever an
American with a keener sense of comedy? Or one with a more driving
will-power? One who more than he, knew how to put his gloom to work?
What else was it that he did? As John Dyer, an eighteenth century
poet once wrote,
"There is a kindly mood of melancholy
That wings the soul."
That's it! "That wings the soul!" That's it! "That wings the
soul!" That's it! "That wings the soul!" Once you have brought it
from bitterness to kindliness, giving the power of flight to spirit
and imagination. So that vision grows, and with it, resolve. And out
of it, gentleness, comprehension, tenderness--and yet unyielding
firmness. This can happen to anybody--who will put his gloom to
work. Who will let despondency stretch his heart--without possessing
it, stretch it--until it is large enough for love. Who will give
himself, and go on giving, and keep on giving, until he turns
despair to hope, and desolation to faith, and emptiness into the
temple of the living God. Until he knows how it is that the most
exultant music arose from the deepest despondency and the cry of
victory from the moment of complete defeat.
Perhaps that is what God is doing to us in this generation--at no
matter what cost--we, who have achieved so much, who have known so
many triumphs and such dark defeats; we who have filled the world to
overflowing with man-made miseries; we who tried to believe that
only happiness was possible, that only happiness was real. Perhaps
our time has come to reckon with forlornness, to face desperation,
to know the meaning of deprivation.
We must be deepened. Until we are, we are not good enough.
We cannot do what is commanded of us. New buoyancies will come--some
day. New confidence, and new assurance. But we, of this bleakest
moment and this darkening hour: we must save a world even though to
save it we must lose it. We must hear as we have never heard before,
those words of Jesus about losing a world to gain a soul. Shall we
fear it? Surrendering to despondency--that so much is called for, so
much demanded, from those who are not yet worthy? Or shall we not
rather take all the emotional intensities of every kind--even
gloom--and make them work for God and the future?
For that future which in premonition and prophecy we can know even
in the present: can come to know until its joy is greater than our
sorrow; a joy that unites itself with all the joys that life can
bring to those who brave the world in every generation--even this.
Our joy--our deep, unfaltering joy, distilled from the very essence
of our gloom.
Prayer: O God, whose truth is ever more than we can utter, deepen
the silence in our hearts. Amen.
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