Weltschmerz

 In prepping for class--reading and taking notes on a friend's essay I've assigned--I ran into a fun word: Weltschmerz. From the German words for world and pain, the term means (in the quick-searched dictionary.com's phrase) "sorrow that one feels and accepts as one's necessary portion in life; sentimental pessimism."

I had vaguely associated the term with German Romanticism (Sorrows of Young Werther sort of stuff). Wikipedia specifies that it's from Jean Paul (a German Romantic), who in turn takes it from a work by the Brothers Grimm (!) to describe "tiefe Traurigkeit über die Unzulänglichkeit der Welt" ("deep sadness about the inadequacy of the world").

How to say: I love this word. "World-weariness"--a resignation that the world is not and will never be "good." 

I'm struck, on the one hand, at how well it captures the worldview of my spirit animal: Eeyore. (My sister insists that my spirit animal is the octopus, which I love! But so often my spirit seems shaped like a depressed stuffed donkey.)

 

 

Weirdly, the idea also seems to resonate with (my inadequate understanding of) certain Buddhist precepts. Life is suffering. Suffering comes from desire/attachment. Letting of of that attachment is a way through. 

Weltschmerz, though, doesn't let go of attachment. It steeps simply misses it, saturating in suffering for what cannot be. It's melancholy without the process of mourning. 

And as such, it becomes--like Eeyore--slightly pitiable and silly. "Sentimental pessimism" is such a cool phrase. (Good job, dictionary-dot-com!) It takes something that could be profound and deep--there are modes of deep pessimism, I think--and empties it of profundity, making it a pose or an attitude. The stereotype of goth teens (or, later, emo teens) likewise seems a species of "sentimental pessimism." Of course, teens of every generation often do suffer from serious depression, so the stereotype itself lacks some generosity and understanding.

BUT--there are plenty of times when I feel the need to give myself a kick in the behind, to jolt myself out of the swamps of Weltschmerz into . . . well, something more helpful or active. 

There's a dangerous pull for me in Weltschmerz, something akin to the sin of acedia--often rendered sloth but perhaps better a kind of conscious freeze after overwhelm, a protective posture of exhausted cynicism. 

What's the line between pessimism and cynicism, I wonder? I like the description I heard of cynicism as "low hope, low humility"--absolutely certain, certain to the point of arrogance, that there is no hope. Exhaustion, by contrast, is "low hope, high humility." Perhaps that's pessimism as well. Maybe Weltschmerz is "low hope, high visibility."

Careful Work and Stormy Skies

I didn't get much more work done on classes today. My best friend contacted me about a Lego half-day to finish up our prior projects before the semester started. I took him up on that.

I got a bit done--mostly errands and some minor administrative tasks. There's almost always tasks that need to be done but don't really matter much, at least not as much as finishing a syllabus. But when you're stuck on syllabus-writing, as I am, you welcome distracting tasks. They keep you busy and give you some vague feeling of productivity even though they are at heart distractions.

I also recognize I'm in a bit of a depression season. I have really, really low-grade depression most of the time. "Dysthymia," my therapist tells me, "if you need a label." Most of the time it's just a low mood and a ramping up of my usual Eeyore outlook on things. Occasionally it blossoms into something a bit more nihilistic, marked by some really awful internal monologues.

I've adopted a metaphor (simile, I suppose) I heard from Stephen Fry. Depression, he says (I paraphrase--see here for the original), is like the weather, a rain shower or thunderstorm. On the one hand, you don't want to deny that it's storming when there's a storm. You wouldn't stroll outside and defiantly talk about how sunny things are as the downpour soaks you. You have to accept that, yes, it's raining. You take steps to adapt: staying indoors, bringing an umbrella, driving carefully with wipers and lights on, and even monitoring reports for anything worse.

But on the other hand, he continues, depression is like a storm in that it passes eventually. (He's talking about his depression;mileage varies, of course.) You don't assume that even a bad storm is just here forever. "Well, I guess it's raining from now on." (Imagine Eeyore voice.) It won't. It'll pass. It's out of your control when it'll pass, just like it's out of control that it rains or storms at all. But pass it will.

Usually, when I'm in a depression shower, I try to let myself off the hook of having to make any big decisions. My perspective when depressed isn't great. It's hard to see in a torrential rain. I'm prone to catastrophize, to make decisions not in my best interests, to gum up my own works in ways I rue later. So usually I try to wait out the storm before deciding things.

But time is short. I gotta make some big decisions about my script analysis class--a big cloud in my depressive stormy skies right now. Having two packed sections with no TA means I need to cut back on grading. How will I record attendance? Can I even teach writing (with planning and revision phases) as I'd planned to do? How do I keep the class rigorous and rewarding for students? Can I keep my ungrading practice? How do I make it through the semester without burning out?

I don't know. I have to determine how to do this, but my stormy weather is giving me some unhelpful suggestions. 

Perhaps my storm will pass in the next few days, giving me enough time to adapt. B

But I suspect I'll just need to do some careful work in the rain.

Conferences, Resilience, Perseverance

Wuff! Exhausting conference day.

When I tell non-academics I'm going to a conference, I think they sometimes assume I'm going on vacation. I hear some of the medical professions actually structure conferences this way; it's assumed the event is mostly play and only a little work.

There's some play involved in traveling and seeing friends that you only see at conferences. But work ("the work") pervades the event: listening to papers, responding to papers, gathering and updating your sense of where the field is, watching out for prospective material or people to introduce to students, shopping book or article proposals to editors, and the endless process of explaining what it is you do or what you're working on currently to people (and engaging what they're working on).

And on top of that you're trying to keep up with your regular work. In my case, that's grading and editing. I did editing duties last night. I ducked out of a reception to grade more. Well--I exercised (ran 5K on the treadmill) and then ran down to get some food. This hotel and this part of Arlington are a bit light on readily available eats. I ate some fine Ethiopian food for lunch, and I stole some good pepperoni flatbread from the reception. But man could I use some greens and grains. I miss cereal.

And I'm writing this, my morning pages, write-something-anything blog that I mostly hope people don't read (but welcome and hello if you are reading this!).

My brain, I must say, is mainly done with hard thinking. It's run a 5K of sorts just listening intently to panels and ideas. My socialization batteries, never champions at endurance events, are pretty drained.

People ask how I've been, how it's going. I'm not sure what to say? I've been in much, much darker, rougher places (two weeks ago was a snippet of what that time was like all the time). But the trials and tribulations of some student issues over the last six months have been an unusual drain to life energy.

It also bothers me anew that I'm so prone to really morbid, suicidal ideation. It bothers me, of course, in that I shouldn't be thinking that; no one should. But it bothers me also that it seems such a first world white guy way of being. Reddit is full of only-half-joking memes of suicidal fantasies. The normalization/romanticization of clinical depression is both shocking and annoying. Saying I often feel low-grade anhedonia is a bit like grumbling about how I'll never find a girlfriend. It sucks, but it's not a life-threatening illness. When PA says it's been a rough year, I suspect he means he almost died due to health issues. I have not almost died due to health issues. Many things are going well. It's fine.

PA told me things had been really rough. I touched his arm. "It's OK," he said. "I'm pretty resilient." That started me thinking about how resilience is one of the new watch-words for our students. We worry because this crop of students just seems overall less resilient than past ones.

I'm not sure I'm that resilient. What's gotten me through rough times is more like a grim, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other persistence. I don't need to be happy or love life. Those things are lagniappe. All that is required is that I continue. It's like Zen, but without the peace. Who needs peace? All that's required is that you continue.

And, eventually, some peace and happiness occasionally show up. Ethiopian food with M was lovely. The working group I saw was stimulating. Seeing friends and students is uplifting.

And finishing my writing for today so that I can play a little Zelda (I brought my new Switch) and turn in is good, too.