Iceland

I'm reading The Geography of Bliss, in which a melancholy man travels to ten different countries to discover what makes them happy.  It's obviously right up my traveling, studying, melancholy alley.  It's also made me decide to move to Iceland.

I mean, not really, although I've long been in love with the name Reykjavik (ever since I learned to pronounce it).  Iceland is one of the most consistently top-rated happy countries in the world.  This is because, Eric Weiner, suggests, they acknowledge life in all its ups and downs.  They celebrate both success and failure.  They live through dark winters and bright summers.  They embrace paradox.

A man named Hilmar told him he was happy and that "I cherish my melancholia...You nurture your little melancholia, and it's like a buzz that makes you feel alive.  You snap yourself a little bit, and you feel this relief of how fragile life is and how tremendously fragile you are."

I love this.  I think part of what's made my foray into depressed thoughts so overwhelming is the idea that I need to get rid of them.  That these are all unhealthy and therefore bad.  The trouble is, there is a lot of truth to my sad thoughts!  The world is hard, and people do suffer unnecessarily.  I'm not about to abandon truth, and so I was stuck. 

I like this Icelandic approach of holding both melancholia and happiness in each hand.  Of acknowledging the fragility of life and living it anyway.  I don't want to be blindly happy, nor do I want to be smothered in sadness.  I thought I had to choose between the two, when I really, I just need to choose to let them both exist side-by-side in my mental space and my experience.

That feels so relieving.