Sometimes, I get an overwhelming sadness about certain situations. I will see something in the news. Or I’ll read some historical account.
Before I go any further, let me explain that most things don’t hit me this way. I can read about Louis XIV’s death from gangrene and not feel a blip. Not too long ago, on the news, a house blew up in Indiana, killing three people. Certainly, I felt bad that this happened, but I wasn’t affected by it. Or when Kobe Bryant’s helicopter went down, I was sorry his life ended that way. Yet, I didn’t join the rest of the country in their ongoing misery about this. So. For the largest part of things — all those tragedies in the news and in history — I have a sense of sympathy. But I don’t dwell on them.
However, there are times when something strikes me, and I feel deeply sorrowful for the situation. I have to find out more about it. I am affected by a great sadness immediately when I hear of the thing.
An example is the Romanovs. Every time I see a photo of them or am reminded of their story, I get sad.
Nicholas Romanov was crowned czar of Russia in 1894. When he heard the news, he seemed bewildered. “What is going to happen to me…to all Russia?” This is what he asked one of his advisors when he took the throne. “I am not prepared to be Czar. I never even wanted to become one.”
He did a terrible job, as such. Then. Twenty-four years later, he seemed just as bewildered when a group of armed thugs — members of the Bolshevik secret police — decided to assassinate him. Nicholas II was well aware he hadn’t been a good ruler. And while he and his entire family had been deposed (or imprisoned) months earlier, with his crown and his name stolen from him, Nicholas did not expect to be murdered.
Yet that entire family was killed in cold blood. Shot and bayonetted to death. There were seven of them altogether: (Nicholas II of Russia, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, and their five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) The youngest, Alexei, was a 13-year-old little boy. What could this young boy have possibly done to the Bolsheviks or any of those Russian people? Or any of the rest of the children, for that matter?
So yes. Every time I see this story, a wave of great despondency comes over me, and I can’t explain it.
Or like the accident with Anne Heche. I never particularly cared for her in the distant way I “knew” about her. As an actress? She’d been in a slew of movies, some of which were pretty decent. But, I was never a big fan. Despite that, when her car accident happened? I experienced a huge pang of sadness. I felt terrible for this to have occurred and found myself reading every article that appeared during the following days. I have no explanation for this degree of sorrow. It just seemed to be something about the tragedy of it all.
Another instance? A central park horse collapsed in the street not too long ago, and his carriage driver got down and whipped the horse, telling her to get up. I cried when I read the story and saw the photos of the horse lying in the street with a pillow under her head. Immediately.
I don’t have a point to any of this today.
I’m simply writing about my experience in this.
And I wonder why it happens for some things and not the next.
I wonder if it happens to others? Like you?
The day I thought about all of this, the word “melancholia” appeared in the “Word of the Day” on Webster’s. Of course, melancholia refers to a feeling of sadness or depression. It is also used to refer to a sad tone or quality that one perceives in something.
Perhaps, a coincidence, this Webster word. Or a note.
When this sadness happens, though, it always makes me pause and give thanks for where I am standing and who I am. Right at that moment. In this big, big place. Filled with both the happy and, sometimes, the sad.
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Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.
— Khalil Gibran
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Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.
— Leonardo da Vinci
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You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.
— Jonathan Safran Foer
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The sad sometimes. But not others.
