Melancholy in an Age of Uncertainty: Navigating Anxiety in a Changing World

If you’re like me, you read the above statement (Rumi is a medieval Sufi mystic) and think how very profound it sounds. No doubt you’ve already encountered a lot of internet mystics bombarding you with similar sage advice. There are daily meditations on how to get through the day. I’m not knocking the attempts to make us feel better, but sometimes there’s no quick fix in life.

As Antonio in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice says:

“In sooth, I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me, you say it wearies you. But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff ‘tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn. And such a want-wit sadness makes of me, That I have much ado to know myself.”

Sometimes we’re hit by a malaise that refuses to be defined as anything other than a melancholic feeling. We might not even know the origins or cause of such a feeling. This lackluster state of being is often attributed to depression. I’m no doctor, at least of medicine, but from what I’ve read, true depression is the result of a chemical imbalance that can be corrected with the right sort of medication.

Other feelings of depression, or what we term depression, can be the result of a traumatic loss or a catastrophic event. These feelings have an obvious cause. In other words, there is a cause-and-effect to our sadness. What Antonio seems to be describing is that free-floating sense of anxiety that is simply a part of life. In the play, Antonio, who has pledged a pound of his flesh to Shylock, is freed of his bond by the clever wrangling of Portia. She brilliantly finds the legal loophole (you can have the flesh if you don’t spill any blood), which frees Antonio from his bizarre contract. You would think that a man who has been living under a death sentence would be ecstatic but he’s not. The play, for the most part, has a happy ending. Couples are paired together, and Shylock is forced to become his worst nightmare, a Christian, but at least his depression is rooted in a definite cause.

Pervasive Melancholy

It is Antonio who stands apart as being plagued with a pervasive melancholy. Critics argue over what the cause of the despondency is as if there has to be a definite cause. We are uncomfortable with things that cannot be defined. There has to be a reason, a cause, to give us a sense of security. To acknowledge that we cannot understand or know the cause would be to admit to the unknown, which leaves us feeling uncertain.

However, we live in a time of uncertainty. Our world has been shifting away from the concrete answers for a long time. The modern age, with its scientific discoveries, has left us bereft of clear certainties. Religion, for example, offered us some understanding of the meaning of life. But in the 19th century, with the rise of Higher Criticism, we see that sacred texts are not as infallible as we previously thought. The writers of these texts were flawed human beings trying to make sense of their world. They were influenced by the culture and politics of their time. Their understanding of life was determined by what they knew, and what they knew was limited.

We now look upon those texts with some degree of uncertainty and skepticism. Our modern age distrusts such absolutes for good reason. We have evolved and discovered that what we thought we knew is not entirely certain. Scientists, for example, learned that subatomic molecules did not operate as expected. They also revealed to us that our objectivity is limited by observation. The ramifications of these discoveries lead us to a place of unknowing. We’re forced to acknowledge that what we thought we understood as truth is no longer absolutely true, which leaves us unsure about who we are and where we’re heading as a people.

Added to this existential insecurity are the radical changes in our world. We’ve moved into a phase of environmental changes that cannot be undone. With the onset of global warming, we have yet to see the consequences of our actions. Our refusal to change our ways will lead us to experience many unknowns. Rising tides will threaten the lives of many, and changes in weather patterns will prove challenging for all of us.

Added to the environmental changes are the political changes. New threats in the Middle East keep us wondering if these events will spill over into something more global. Equally, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has universal consequences. Conflicts such as these keep us at the tipping point of another world war. There is also another concern that is closer to home, and that is the erosion of democracy. We’ve seen from the last U.S. elections how fragile our democracy is. Almost four years have passed since the 2020 election, and we’ve discovered how a large group of individuals tried to undermine the right of the majority to elect their respective candidate.

Such conspiratorial actions have seriously damaged our trust in democracy. Inspired by a man who lies and cheats to get his way, these people have abandoned the democratic process and become the enemy within. Since we find ourselves in a vacuum of political idealism, we are prey to the cynics who pull at the vestiges of a system that has prevented us from falling into fascism. Should these people have their way, and there is no guarantee that they won’t, we will find that our anxiety has a definite cause, and no amount of sage advice will eradicate a political bully.

If we’re feeling anxious and suffer from this sense of free-floating anxiety, it’s because the world is changing, and these changes seriously affect our mood. But we cannot allow those feelings to leave us powerless. It’s not enough to accept things as they are when we can do something to change them. 

Antonio bemoans his condition. His inability to engage with the world around him disempowers him. He is incapable of changing his feelings because he is resigned to them.

 We all have a choice. We can accept things as they are and do nothing, or we can determine to make ourselves better by trying to change the world around us for the better.