My Occasional Morning Melancholy, Jackson Browne, and Letting It Be

IT HAPPENS, BUT IT'S ALSO IMPERMANENT

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

Maybe you’ve also experienced this? I wake up some mornings and feel a sense of growing melancholy as the morning progresses. It may or may not have a readily identifiable root, but it arises insidiously just the same.

Though I’m grateful that they are impermanent —these temporary states of unexplained melancholy tinged around the edges with sorrow— they affect my mood but usually disappear by the afternoon.

At nearly 65, I’m aware that depression and sadness can increase in our twilight years. As friends, family, colleagues, and other contemporaries embark on their final illnesses, we are often affected in ways that cause us worry and sadness. These are givens in life - as another top my teachers, Stephanie Tate, says… “It’s First Noble Truth stuff.”

We are all of the nature to grow old, become ill, and die.

There is nothing we can do to avoid these states of reality. Personally, I already take an antidepressant for anxiety and it largely works very w…