Fourth Deadly Thought: Sadness

Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. G.K. Chesterton

Sadness is the ancient monastic name for it. Melancholy. Self-pity, the longing gaze at lush grasses growing on the other side.

What I might have…what could have been…if only that…if not for them…if I had not…

How fortunate others are, compared to me.

Sadness: One of the Eight Deadly Thoughts that rob us of joy, distract us from love, paralyze our lives.

Yikes, I am good at this one!

Problem #1. We swim in sad news. There are people making big money to keep our focus on how rotten we have it. Other regions are more prosperous, other eras were more ideal, we are all on a slippery slope to doom and devastation.

Headlines You Will Never See:

• Residents of 24 Main Street feel great today.
• 3, 000, 000 area commuters arrive home, unharmed.
• Local couple reportedly unconcerned about the economy.
• Recent studies prove majority of teenagers like their parents.
• Neighbor’s pit bull licks master’s hand before daily walk. Story on page 14.

Problem #2. From what we can tell, everyone else has more money, a nicer house, better vacations, brighter children, funnier friends and tastier dinners than you do. And that’s just from Facebook–forget the Christmas letters. How did everyone else achieve such perfect lives?

We compare our worst with others’ best and come up wanting, and so we either fall into the slimy pit of envy, or set out on the noble search for something we can’t define and will never find. Melancholy is the happiness of being sad, Victor Hugo noted.

What Sadness Reveals

1. We view other people as competitors.
2. We feel trapped by the deficiency of life in the present.
3. We refuse to settle for a non-ideal world.
4. We are defining our worth by what we achieve.

Freed From Sadness, Unleashed To Love

1. Share rather than compare, the gifts you’ve been given.
2. Cultivate the habit of noticing what is good.
3. Set out on a quest to make beauty where it’s lacking.
4. Seek your identity in the incomparable love of God.

What ideas do you have to overcome the temptation of sadness.

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