Maturity sees world’s ugliness with more melancholy than anger

By David McElroy · July 27, 2018

As I drove home from work Friday afternoon, I suddenly realized I was feeling anger. I felt confused about the reason for a moment and then it hit me. I was feeling a combination of anger and despair about something in my personal life which I can’t control.

For a few moments, I let the emotions fill me and I felt them clearly in my body. Then my muscles relaxed. The strength of the anger faded. I still felt despair over something I couldn’t control, but I felt peace.

I used to be a lot angrier than I am today. I was angry at the world and wanted to force it to change. I wanted to fix the world. I wanted to save the world. I was angry about various things in my life — about love, about money, about family, about all sorts of things. I wanted to scheme and manipulate everything in ways to change other people.

About a lot of things, I felt tremendously angry. At times, I felt as though the anger was driving me. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve let go of most of the anger. It still flares up at times — as it did tonight — but I’m far more likely to see the things I hate in the world through the lens of sadness than anger.

Maturity heals a lot of anger. Maturity embraces melancholy.

A lot of good art is driven by anger, but how many good artists stay angry without destroying themselves? When I hear anger in an artist’s work, I smile in recognition. It reminds me of the way I felt when I was young. But when I hear anger in an artist even after he’s been around for years, I wonder what it’s doing to him inside.

When I was young, I strongly identified with a line in a 1985 Steve Taylor song which said, “I just wanna stay angry at the evil.” That’s the way I felt about the world back then. I saw evil. I saw pain. I saw hurt and oppression and all sorts of other terrible things. I felt angry about what I saw. I burned with a passion to force the change I wanted to see.

I still see all the same things in the world. I see evil and pain and hurt and oppression — and everything else I’ve ever seen. But instead of seeing the fiery anger of my youth, I see these things with sadness. I feel melancholy at the choices which we humans make.

I used to want to use my anger to change things, but now I accept melancholy — because I know I can’t make decisions to create change for anybody but myself.

Anger ultimately destroys or else gives way to sadness. Anger leads to reckless attempts to solve problems. It leads to more of the same, because forcing people to do things against their will brings reprisals and more bitterness.

With maturity, the anger falls away and is replaced by sadness, because we see that nothing we say is going to change the human condition. Not today. Not ever. The only thing we can really do is to practice love — when we can get ourselves to be consistent with our beliefs — and suggest that others try the same.

At about the same time that Steve Taylor’s song came out — the one I mentioned above that talks about wanting to hold onto the anger — singer/songwriter Pat Terry had a line that didn’t really connect with me at the time. His line said, “Nothing I say’s gonna change the way of this world.”

I wasn’t mature enough to understand that at the time.

Taylor was expressing the anger of youth: “The world is evil and my righteous anger will keep me motivated enough to force change.”

Terry was expressing the melancholy of experience: “I want to share the truth I know with you, but I know that nothing is going to change how this world operates, so I can’t force you to accept it.”

I no longer feel the need to save the world. I no longer feel the need to force people to reshape the world or their lives into what I think they ought to be. All I feel is sadness about the world’s potential and about how individuals destroy their own lives. To the extent that I understand any truth — and I like to believe I’ve found bits and pieces of it — I know all I can do is share what I’ve learned and hope that a few others find some value in it.

When I was young, I had all sorts of plans. I was going to be great. I was going to change the world. I was going to be a hero. But I have fewer plans than ever today. I just try to keep improving myself and try to figure out how to live the love I want to live — and to have the relationships I so deeply need.

So what happened to the youthful anger of Steve Taylor?

He went on to make more albums and then made several really good films. About four years ago, he finally made another album.

His last song on that album is called “Comedian,” and it casts God as a cosmic comedian of sorts. The song ends with repetition of the line, “Man makes plans, God laughs,” over and over.

I haven’t talked with Taylor about the arc of his understanding, but I see him as a brilliant and angry young artist who thought he could change the world by staying angry at evil, but he’s become a more mature artist — still a brilliant lyricist — who knows that changing the world isn’t within his control.

I still wish I could change the world. I still wish I could change a lot of things about my own world. I still wish I could have immediate success and wealth and — above all — love.

But I’m not angry about it. At least not often. I’m sad about the state of the world. I’m sad about the choices people make. I’m melancholy about the damage we do to each other. I’m melancholy about the unmet needs that I so strongly feel.

I know God laughs at my plans. I pray for others to make better choices. I pray that I will become the man I need to be. And I wait in patience for the change that the world needs — and for the change I need.

God laughs at anything I plan. I’m finally mature enough to accept that.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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