Varieties of Melancholy

A Hopeful Guide to Our Sombre Moods

By: The School of Life

Narrated by: Rachel Lanning

An insightful and consoling guide to the melancholic state of mind.

This is a book that celebrates the most neglected but valuable emotion we can feel: melancholy. Melancholy isn’t depression, rage, or bitterness. It’s a serene, wise, and kindly response to the difficulties of being alive. It helps us navigate a wise and rational middle ground between extreme despair and naïve optimism.

But melancholy is a well-kept secret. It isn't celebrated or recommended. It remains relatively unexplored in a hyper-competitive, noisy, frantic age.

This book carefully collects and interprets a wide range of universally recognizable forms of melancholy, rendering us less confused by our precious yet elusive feelings. We discover everything from the melancholy of a Sunday evening and the melancholy of adolescence to the melancholy of parties and the infatuated melancholy of having a crush.

Offering a rich and varied portrait of melancholy and its range of emotions, this book leads the listener toward deeper insight, more authentic acceptance, and more honest self-compassion.

AN IN-DEPTH EXPLORATION OF A COMPLEX EMOTION through the lens of art, architecture, literature, and philosophy.

HOW TO INTERPRET AND ACCEPT our melancholy moods.

INCREASE SELF AWARENESS through meditating on melancholy.

EXAMINES 35 VARIETIES OF MELANCHOLY including: Dating and Melancholy, Loneliness and Melancholy, Adolescence and Melancholy, and Politics and Melancholy.

©2021 The School of Life (P)2023 The School of Life

Hurt locker

Lov3d part on adolescence.as a former teacher , it solidified a lot of my thoughts, and recall when I was a teen

describes melancholy, That's about it

It describes all the variations of melancholy. But doesn't do a very good job on how one is to live with melancholy.