Varieties of melancholy [electronic book] : a hopeful guide to our somber moods / The School of Life and Alain de Botton.

By: The, Life of School.

Contributor(s): de Botton, Alain.

Material type: materialTypeLabel

BookPublisher: La Vergne : The School of Life, 2021Copyright date: ©2021Description: 1 online resource (110 pages).Content type: text Media type: computer Carrier type: online resourceISBN: 9781912891603 (hardback); 9781912891948 (e-book).DDC classification: Online resources: E-book

Contents:

Introduction -- Intelligence -- Melancholy -- Pills -- Melancholy -- Loneliness -- Melancholy -- Achievement -- Melancholy -- Superfluity -- Melancholy. -- Photos -- Melancholy. -- The Womb -- Melancholy -- Astronomy -- Melancholy -- Landscape -- Melancholy. -- Introversion -- Melancholy -- Sex -- Melancholy -- Post-Coitus -- Melancholy -- History -- Melancholy -- Righteousness -- Melancholy -- Crushes -- Melancholy -- Parties -- Melancholy -- Splitting -- Melancholy -- Post-Religion -- Melancholy -- Sonnet 29 -- Melancholy -- Architecture -- Melancholy -- Adolescence -- Melancholy -- Fifty -- Melancholy -- Luxury -- Melancholy -- Sunday Evening -- Melancholy -- Agnes Martin -- Melancholy -- Hokusai -- Melancholy -- Travel -- Melancholy -- Misanthropy -- Melancholy -- Extinction -- Melancholy -- America -- Melancholy -- Animals -- Melancholy -- Tahiti -- Melancholy -- Politics -- Melancholy -- The Inner Critic -- Melancholy -- Gardening -- Melancholy.

List(s) this item appears in: Self-Care Collection

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
e-BOOK	MTU Bishopstown Library		Not for loan

Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An insightful and consoling guide to the melancholic state of mind.

This is a book that celebrates the most neglected but valuable emotion we can feel: melancholy. Melancholy isn't depression, rage, or bitterness. It's a serene, wise, and kindly response to the difficulties of being alive. It helps us navigate a wise and rational middle ground between extreme despair and naïve optimism.

But melancholy is a well-kept secret. It isn't celebrated or recommended. It remains relatively unexplored in a hyper-competitive, noisy, frantic age.

This book carefully collects and interprets a wide range of universally recognizable forms of melancholy, rendering us less confused by our precious yet elusive feelings. We discover everything from the melancholy of a Sunday evening and the melancholy of adolescence to the melancholy of parties and the infatuated melancholy of having a crush.

Offering a rich and varied portrait of melancholy and its range of emotions, this book leads the reader toward deeper insight, more authentic acceptance, and more honest self-compassion.

AN IN-DEPTH EXPLORATION OF A COMPLEX EMOTION through the lens of art, architecture, literature, and philosophy. HOW TO INTERPRET AND ACCEPT our melancholy moods. INCREASE SELF AWARENESS through meditating on melancholy. EXAMINES 35 VARIETIES OF MELANCHOLY including: Dating and Melancholy, Loneliness and Melancholy, Adolescence and Melancholy, and Politics and Melancholy.

Electronic reproduction.: ProQuest LibCentral. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Self-Care Collection

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Achievement & Melancholy For most of our lives, we're hard at work. We're up till midnight in the library studying for a degree, we're learning a trade, building a business, writing a book. We have hardly a moment to ourselves. We don't even ask whether we are fulfilled; it's simply obvious that this is the bit that has to hurt. We fall asleep counting the weeks until we are finished with our work. And then, finally, one day, slightly unexpectedly, the end arrives. Through slow and steady toil, we have achieved what we had been seeking for years: the book is done, the business is sold, the degree certificate is on the wall. People around us cheer and lay on a party; we might even take a holiday. That is when, for those of us in the melancholy camp, unease is liable to descend. The beach is beautiful, the sky is flawless, there is a scent of lemon in the air from the orchard. We have nothing unpleasant to do. We can read, loll, play and dawdle. Why then are we so flat, disoriented and perhaps slightly tearful? The mind works in deceptive ways. In order to generate the momentum required to prompt us to finish any task, our mind pretends that once the work is done, it will finally be content, and will accept reality as it is. It will cease its restless questions; it won't throw up random unease. It will be on our side. However, our mind isn't in any way well suited to honouring such promises. It turns out to be vehemently opposed to, and endangered by, states of calm and relaxation. It can manage them, at best, for a day or so. And then, with cold rigour, it will be on its way again with worries and questions. It will ask us once more to account for ourselves, to ask what the point of us is, to doubt whether we are worthy or decent, to question what right we have to be. Once hard work ends, there is nothing to stop our melancholy minds from leading us to the edge of an abyss we had been able to resist so long as our heads were down. We start to feel that no achievement will ever, in fact, be enough, that nothing we do can last or make a difference, that little is as good as it should be, that we are tainted by a basic guilt of being alive, that others around us are far more noble and able than we will ever be, that the blue sky is oppressive and frightening in its innocence - and that 'doing nothing' is the hardest thing we ever have to do. Perhaps, deep down, the melancholy mind knows that the ultimate fate of the planet is to be absorbed by the Sun in 5 billion years and that everything is therefore vain, considered against a cosmological sense of time and space. We know that we are puny and irrelevant apparitions; we haven't been so much busy as protected from despair by deadlines, punishing schedules, work trips and late-night conference calls. A grossly inflated local sense of importance spared us a recognition of cosmic futility. But now, with the achievement secured, there is no defence left against existential terror. It is just us and, in the firmament above, the light of a billion billion dying stars. There are no more 8:30 a.m. meetings, no more revision notes and no more chapter deadlines to distract us from our metaphysical irrelevance. We should be kinder to ourselves. Rather than putting ourselves through the infinitely demanding process of idling (as though a nervous, adrenaline-filled creature such as Homo sapiens could ever pull off such an implausible feat), we should be self compassionate enough to keep setting ourselves one slightly irrelevant but well-camouflaged challenge after another - and do our very best to pretend that these matter inordinately and that there should be no sizeable gaps between them. Our work exists to protect us from a brutal sense of despair and angst. We should ensure that we never stop having tasks to do - and never make that most reckless of moves, taking a long holiday, or - god forbid - embark on a truly foolhardy scheme, retiring. Excerpted from Varieties of Melancholy: A Hopeful Guide to Our Somber Moods by The School of Life All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

The School of Life is a global organization helping people lead more fulfilled lives. Through our range of books, gifts and stationery we aim to prompt more thoughtful natures and help everyone to find fulfillment.

The School of Life is a resource for exploring self-knowledge, relationships, work, socializing, finding calm, and enjoying culture through content, community, and conversation. You can find us online, in stores and in welcoming spaces around the world offering classes, events, and one-to-one therapy sessions.

The School of Life is a rapidly growing global brand, with over 7 million YouTube subscribers, 389,000 Facebook followers, 239,000 Instagram followers and 163,000 Twitter followers.

The School of Life Press brings together the thinking and ideas of the School of Life creative team under the direction of series editor, Alain de Botton. Their books share a coherent, curated message that speaks with one voice: calm, reassuring, and sane.