Self-education

I'm learning a few things about myself while I am remote from those I love.

Albeit my life is a fairly happy place, I am surrounded by a lot of virtue, greatness, and love — this was not always the case — but I realize that I have an affinity for lugubrious, solemn things. When given a choice, I opt for tragedies than comedies in all mediums from literature, film, cinema... When discussing serious things, I always want to talk about particular sad events that are happening in the world. I cry when I hear about people dying from poor work conditions. I sob profusely when I see animals being mutilated. I can't breathe when I know that a woman is raped or being sold in the sex slavery. And, it is the focal point of my thoughts everyday, the great sadnesses of the world. 

What is wrong with me? Is the glass always half empty? It's not that I cannot be optimistic, or I don't see the greener side (is there?!), but I just don't immediately think that way. My impulsion is to react very seriously and critically, analyze, dissect and deconstruct.

I've been told that I have a very Eastern European disposition — whatever that means — and I suppose it makes sense in some way in the understandings I have of and in life when comparing myself to my close friends who are slavic. When looking at the literary canon from different cultures and countries and the sentiments that are foregrounded for the readers from their literature, Slavic writers, and in turn the people, are the best at manifesting this quiet yet undisguised raw despondency that I am oh so familiar with. I know I may be biased, because I refer only to the Russian writers I have been exposed to like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, and compare them to plethora of English/British writers I've read or been formally trained to read during my undergrad, but I've learned that English lacks so many words for so many complicated emotions we, humans, endure. I don't think I could pick a single word in English to encompass the profound melancholy, but a permutations of synonyms for it. 

Тоска (Russian, pronounced tos-ka)

"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its
deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish,
often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull
ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a
vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may
be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia,
love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
-Vladimir Nabokov"

This isn't to say that I do not laugh because I am a knee-slapper, kneel-over, bellower, guffawing, person. Cynics laugh. All. The. Fucking. Time.  Of course. But, my brain is wired unconventionally. I just always want to talk about stupidly melancholic things, and then laugh about it . . . ?

(Ironically, THIS POST.)

So, I am still in Montreal letting my thoughts wander the cob-webbed crevices of my cranium at 1:40am... I'm feeling slightly better than 4 weeks ago, but this personal journey is only just beginning, because only now do I feel everything is out there. Much more to learn about the self and so many things to rectify. Perhaps this feeling is all just a cathartic move on my part and I am due for a completely all around jovial self... How's that for optimism?!

C'est la vie.