Choosing Intentional Melancholia

Just 20 minutes, the time your heart demands from you to dwell into a feeling that your mind would do everything to discard.

20 minutes are what your heart begs for.

20 minutes where it wants to submerge itself into a melancholic euphoria which betrays every logic your mind can formulate.

The time where it asks you to bury all other feelings other than sadness.

What would you do? Would you give that 20 minutes to your heart?

During these 20 minutes, your mind connects with your heart, drops all logical explanations and together they travel to a place surrounded by a comforting darkness, a space built from your experiences, real or fiction, felt or implied, active or passive.

Real or fake.

But they form a chain of events with the central theme of sorrow and sadness.

But why would you want that?

Why not exit this space, return to your original world, filled with happiness and hope.

That is because sometimes, your heart would require you to stop and cleanse all the sadness you have been holding for all these years, like rain washing all of them away.

This is intentional melancholy, a practice of delving into intentional sorrowful feelings to take a step back from everything, to reinforce that you are capable of such feelings or to let go of all small disappointments that crept on to you whether knowingly or unknown.

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There are times when you'd be sad, could be due to multiple reasons, could be due to no reason whatsoever.

Be it watching a tragic show or reading a sad novel, hearing a song, listening to someone's emotional out pour.

The reason does not matter, what matters is this particular sentiment.

What do you do when your heart wants to dwell in this sea of depressing thoughts? They are not harmful thoughts, they are not the ones that bends your mind or lead you to something dangerous. Your mind knows this so it allows your heart to revel in such reflections and you wouldn't want to escape it for a while.

Maybe 20 minutes are what your heart desires.

For those 20 minutes it wants you to remain in this sea of darkness.

Because after that you will return to your own world to your own circumstances where there will be other feelings involved, better feelings, the ones you would want to reach.

But right now it wants you to stay.

What do you do to keep these feelings bundled up together?

Just for 20 minutes?

Keep it tightly to yourself so they do not escape?

Just for this moment?

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No need to hold them, let them flow, let your heart & mind dwell within this space, let yourself think and give this sadness a physical place.

Dwelling is not spiraling, do not fear this part of your heart.

You are consciously choosing to experience sadness and you can easily return from it.

It can be an emotional experience, poetry does it, art does it.

Sometimes we seek out sad stories because they give us a safe room in which to feel things that don't have a convenient place in everyday life.

And perhaps you do not need to bundle these feelings tightly.

Maybe, for 20 minutes you can let them go

let sadness come in waves.

let yourself feel strangely peaceful inside it.

let a memory hurt.

let a song break your heart

let yourself cry.

You don't have to turn every feeling into a lesson.

Sadness does not need to be defeated, it just needs 20 minutes in which to exist.