Melancholy is a Classical Mood

Gear up for New Beginnings

Amy Barr of The Lukeion Project

The world is currently suffering from some very Classical maladies such as melancholy, a term that comes from Greek: µέλαινα χολή melaina chole meaning “black bile.” In the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Hippocrates, in his work Aphorisms (from Greek ἀφορισμός: aphorismos, meaning concise or memorable expressions of a general truth), characterized the condition of having long-lasting fears and despondence as melancholia, a physical problem characterized by mental symptoms.

If you prefer some Latin roots, try lugubriousness (Latin lugere, "to mourn") or moroseness, (Latin morosus, "self-will or fastidious habit"); and saturnineness, (Sāturnīnus, "under the influence of the planet Saturn") which brings us back full circle since both Greeks and Romans thought dark moods meant one was under the influence of the planet Saturn.

Both the Greeks and Romans viewed the god Saturn (Cronos to the Greeks) as being the guy in charge of agriculture (specifically the harvest), periodic renewal, and liberation. He’s the one we see as an old man carrying a sickle due to his primary job in agriculture. His iconography is often confused with the “grim reaper” in modern times. Even a few decades ago, Saturn was the illustration commonly used along side best wishes as we would ring in a happy new year. His overall vibe was “out with the old, in with the new.” The Romans named January after the two-faced god Janus, a fellow that was in charge of endings and, simultaneous new beginnings.

Melancholy, a mournful wistfulness, often precedes great changes. The “best of all holidays,” according to the Roman poet Catullus, was the festival for Saturn in late December. About the time they couldn't stand one more long dark dreary cold day, the Romans threw huge parties, decorated everything lavishly, exchanged jobs between the powerless and powerful while they also exchanged gifts to celebrate Saturnalia.

As an educator, I have seen a lot of students suffering from melancholy over the past 18 months. Who can blame them? It can be difficult to focus on mundane classwork if one isn’t certain what life will look like in an uncertain future. Everyone is wistful about the past and uneasy in their new terrain. Uncharted territory isn’t all that fun.

Students: even if gloom is in the room and typical enticements are few, what can offer sufficient inspiration to engage in one’s studies with excellence even during times of great uncertainty?

Prior to roughly 100 years ago, no significant percentage of the population enjoyed a college education. People were not, contrary to modern spin, poorly educated. On the contrary! Flip through an original edition of McGuffey Readers to see that most students mastered material by 6^th grade that colleges won’t touch until students enter upper-level seminars, if ever. While the decline (collapse) of education is worthy of multiple blogs, suffice it to say that history’s best thinkers, inventors, writers, speakers, artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs achieved greatness without pomp and circumstance.

A good education—one that is rich with literature and well-stocked with essentials like language mastery, logic, rhetoric, sciences, maths, and then adorned with music, arts, and a broad exposure to practical skills—is the key to unlocking the future in any form it might take.

The future should not be framed in terms of diplomas and acceptance letters even under the best conditions. In times of great uncertainty and certain change, think of education as an epic RPG (roll playing game, for you old folks) in which YOU prepare yourself for the ultimate boss by accumulating skills and strengths in your path. There’s no older sibling or neighbor to spoil the end of this game for you and there are few cheat codes available. You will have no idea what the final boss will throw at you so get ready now. Accumulate strengths, skills, experience, energy, equipment, and even teammates to help you along the way. Train well and you’ll succeed, even if all your battles will be fought in new territory.

What Would You Do if You Were Brave?

By Amy Barr the Mostly Fearless

I am not afraid of too many things except squash bugs. There are probably several reasons why this is the case which I’ll discuss below. Some might say I’m lucky. Luck doesn’t have much to do with whether a person is typically fearful or not. Why not?

Being fearful (full of fear) is a choice. I’m not talking about the mundane sorts of worry that hit suddenly when one might have left a garden hose running or that zing of concern about missing a deadline. An all-consuming anxiety -- being full of fear -- means you’ve allowed your imagination to go on overdrive and then you have believed your own overactive imagination. Think of that! Few of us would have much faith in fortune tellers but many of us wholeheartedly believe our own imagined/fictional future without question.

Fear Farming

We aren’t always to blame for our ever-present dread. Two minutes watching or reading the “news” will have us intentionally tied in knots. If you are a student, you might have others help you feel fearful if you don’t take this class, earn that credit, or go to that college. If you are a parent, you might remain ever fearful about what your child might do or be, or not do (or be). All of us are supplied loads of fear fodder because humans respond to fear. We all do stuff, buy stuff, and think stuff we wouldn’t do, buy, or think if we weren’t so afraid. One of the reasons I am not afraid of too many things is that I turned off fear-farmers on T.V., newspapers, and social media. 

Aristotle once said, “Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”  What if we all could learn to fear no evil?

Fear Framing

One of the reasons I am not afraid of too many things is that my usual response to feeling fearful is research followed by problem solving. In the whole fight or flight scheme, I fight by looking at what I fear right in the eyes. I frame my fear. Framing means “inventing or contriving an idea or explanation and formulating it mentally.” If I become fearful about health, money, the future, or really anything, I start to read everything I can on the subject. I look for explanations. I formulate a plan of action. By framing my fears, I also shrink them to a more manageable size. I build a plan of attack to solve the problem. Others frame their fears by talking them over with sensible, calm, and wise people. What if we could all learn to enlist strong help as we go through dark valleys?  

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” —Rosa Parks

Fear Focus

Fear makes us fight or flee. In our fear we often blame others for things they didn’t do. As a teacher I have fearful students who will blame me because they missed an assignment or did poorly. Sometimes they’ll flee (“I don’t want to take this class anyway”). Fearful people might be enticed to fight the perceived enemy or do even stranger things rather than frame a resolution or think logically to resolve and dissolve their fears. Yoda wasn’t wrong when he said, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Even wiser was the philosopher emperor, Marcus Aurelius who said, “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Seneca said, “Where fear is, happiness is not.” Refocus your fear. Look where it is leading you and choose a better path.

Always Read the Introductions to Things

Wisdom for Students Getting Started

Sue Fisher, Wizened Language Wiz

I sing of glossaries and introductions, of maps and charts and tables of contents and a student too eager to start who ignored them all.

The following story falls into the “true confessions” department and my willingness to tell it is because of how great a lesson there is in here.

It was my first week of freshman year in college and I had just had my very first Greek class. I was so excited because I had been dying to take ancient Greek since ninth grade and it was finally happening. Growing up in the days before the internet, I had absolutely no knowledge of ancient languages or even what the word inflection meant and in the first class we really hadn’t done much beyond learning the alphabet and discussing course mechanics and some background on ancient Greece.

For our translation homework we were given our marching orders and a syllabus and sent on our way. I got back to my dorm room and looked at the syllabus and noted that there was some reading and YES! my very first translation assignment. I couldn’t wait. I dug right in – to the translation that is.

To this day that fifteen-line translation with most of the vocabulary provided took me longer than any other translation I’ve ever done, and this is saying something, considering I took Greek through the 900-level in grad school.

“How could this be?” you might ask. The answer is simple. I didn’t follow the instructions. Had I read the introduction first, as I had been tasked to do, I would have read the explanatory information about just how inflected languages work. I would have explored the glossary and the maps, resources provided to help with the translation, and I would have cut my work time at least in half if not more so.

After hours of struggle and dismay that I wasn’t up to the task of learning an ancient language, I somehow stumbled back to the introduction and read about what inflected languages are and how they worked. Suddenly everything made sense and translation came easily. The lesson in this story is obvious. As you are all starting your new semester (or new anything), opening those books, getting your initial marching orders, please keep my story in mind. Not only is imperative to really follow directions, but it is also a good idea to really explore all your new books. Start at the very beginning. See if there is a table of contents and any maps or charts. You might not need them yet, but when the time comes, you’ll know they’re there. Check the back of the book. Is there an index? What about a glossary? Are there more charts or tables or maps or illustrations there that you should keep in mind? An exploration of your book will take you no more than ten minutes but can save you oodles of time later. Plus, you’re likely to find something in there that is interesting.

Most importantly, though, especially as you move on to college, it will be assumed that you have done this. Instructors will expect you to be familiar with your books and will assume that you are using all the resources within them. They may even ask homework or exam questions with this in mind. Failure to fully know and use your books can cost you unnecessary points and time.

So go forth and explore your books; read those introductions and italicized things. Be eager but be wise. The time and anguish you save will be your own.

Finishing is its Own Reward

A Note for Those Finishing Long Races

By Amy Barr, Latinist and Gardener

Sprinters know whether they'll be in range to win within the first couple of seconds of a race. Weightlifters know instantly if they'll tackle the challenge set before them. Why do marathon runners force themselves to crawl across finish lines and why do mountain climbers drag themselves wounded and weary to the summit even though they knew well in advance that they weren't going to take first place? The prize of endurance is completion. Completion is often quite enough of a prize.

Perfectionists will often chime, “whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.” This, too, is also true but with a few caveats. Some use this adage as an excuse to quit whenever one feels a job has been too poorly done. For most of us, the least qualified judge of our own worthiness is ourselves.

I’ve seen perfectionism rob many people of their prize of getting things done. In my own profession I see otherwise competent students take a low score one rough week and then I see them give up. The curse of perfectionism typically effects 5-10% of my students and the results are always difficult to watch. I have seen a student give up because she scored a single 89% during a semester of earning upper 90% or above. One Latin student abandoned the class after a mediocre midterm only to discover a month later that he had earned a perfect score on the National Latin Exam. In graduate school I meet a man who had been “working” on his doctoral dissertation for over a decade but could never get it perfect enough to finish.

Few things in life are sprints. Most of what we humans accomplish work out more like a marathon or a rugged mountain climb. We are far more likely to crawl across the finish line or trudge to the summit with a bruise or two than we are to flawlessly sprint to the win. Also just like an endurance race, few adoring fans wait at the end to cheer us on as we finish the long haul.  

Doing things well is a worthy goal but a poor excuse. Life is far too short to give up whenever one’s hope of perfection fades. When you trip over your own feet, expect to hit the pavement. This is normal. The next part of the endurance race makes you exceptional in a crowd of people who give up too soon. The reward comes to those who stand up, dust off, tie shoelaces, and keep going (consider that skinned knee and embarrassed ego as a badge of courage). Finishing is its own reward. There is greatness in simply getting things done.

Rookie Writers: Learn to be Limber

There's No Such Thing as One Size Fits All in Writing

By Amy Barr, crusty old author and Latin teacher

    Recently one of our Lukeion instructors shared a note with me from a parent lamenting how her daughter’s once flowery prose had become, at least to her way of thinking, too clinical in academic assignments. What had happened to her daughters formerly ornate and creative approach to writing? 

    My daughter earned her college degree in design. When she started, she was already well versed in ways to express her own creative style. Every class she took and every project she completed forced her to work in unique ways. What she learned in an oil painting class was not at applicable in a class about logo and package design. Her experience in illustration did not apply directly to her design of a large-scale campus art installation. While she never had a single class on developing her own creative style, her ability to create unique pieces not only persisted through her college program, but it grew by leaps and bounds as she learned new ways of expression.

    The connection between design and writing is simple: learning new forms will not erase old skills but build them impressively. Expanding one’s writing mastery requires us to leave our comfort zone and accomplish new modes and methods. 

    Students who enjoy writing typically come to us with experience in writing ornate or even flowery creative fictional prose. As a writer matures, he or she must leave behind comfortable personal styles. A precise literary analysis will differ from a screen play which will differ from a lab report or a speech about economic models or sustainable agriculture. Yet each assignment, method, and mode will expand one's skill.

If a writer can’t adopt new methods and adapt new skills to different types of writing, one’s skills will eventually stagnate. Even wonderfully creative writers must branch out, broaden understandings, and continue to grow. What are some steps to help in this process?

Appreciate new rules for each different type of writing project.

    Creative writing and academic writing share a few elements, but objectives are as different as mud and muffins. There are new rules and different expectations for academic writing. What worked well in emotive fiction must be set aside when composing a good lab report or analyzing a Latin epic. Many of our best and brightest writers feel the sting of disappointment when they get their first writing score back. “What happened? This is usually my strong suit!” 

Where readers once demanded strong visuals and gushing narratives that tug at the heart, they now demand precision, objective analysis, simplicity, and clarity. Set aside those rococo turns of mood and tense for now. Concision and accuracy must rule. Learn to be limber! There will be times for every kind of writing. Adding new skills will always serve you well.

Celebrate the differences and enjoy the challenge.

Embrace every writing mission and play by the rules given. Students who struggle the most want to change every book report, essay, and research paper back into the writing style that makes them most comfortable. This is like trying to apply the rules of tennis to swimming. Don't critique your research paper using the rules of creative writing. If you are given any writing challenge, follow those rules and do your best to learn new methods and modes.

Embrace feedback as your best path to improvement. 

    Instructors spend long hours giving feedback over writing assignments, and guess what? That feedback is always in the form of recommendations for improvement. Young writers don’t know what they don’t know. Learning how to compose a good thesis, or the rules of citation, or the specifics of quoting sources come only with effort. Instructors spend a lot of time trying to help you iron out mundane wrinkles.  

    Getting feedback is difficult, especially if we feel like we are good writers. If we’ve spent effort doing our best, anything less than a glowing report feels harsh and personal. Anger and disappointment are common responses to what was intended as edification and education. Instructors have exactly one reason to spend hours pouring over your writings: they want you to get better at writing! Never resent those who give feedback.

    All the best authors in the world have had readers and fellow writers edit and give copious feedback before works go to press. This most painful process makes all the difference. It is the finishing polish, the perfect cut, the final touch. Embrace feedback as your best path to improvement. Singers can hear themselves sing. Painters can see how people react to their art. Writers must rely on truthful editors. 

3 Beautiful Thoughts by Marcus Aurelius

Some Imperial Words of Wisdom During Times of Trouble & Peace

By Amy Barr, Wizened Sage of Online Education at The Lukeion Project

Marcus Aurelius was the last of the Five Good Emperors. He was not only a good emperor, he was also an excellent philosopher. His deep thought life prepared him for the many hardships he would experience. He fought endless defensive wars along Roman frontiers. He endured the early death of his closest loved ones. He suffered the failure of his soon-to-be successor Commodus to develop into one who would rule well (Commodus would instead gain immortal fame as the first NO-GOOD emperor). 

Most relatedly to us, perhaps, Marcus Aurelius lived during the Antonine plague (Plague of Galen) which decimated the Roman world in a far more serious way than our current health crisis. At least 5 million perished during Marcus' pandemic, but likely far more as whole towns and cities perished, fell to ruin, and left no historian to count their numbers. Thousands died daily in Rome and the sight of  carts piled high with the dead would traumatize Rome's survivors. The Antonine plague caused societal disruptions, not the least of which was Rome’s failure to defend herself from invaders while her economy suffered collapse as most basic services in defenses, transportation, agriculture, and trade came to a halt.

Marcus Aurelius sustained himself by journaling. Thankfully, those notes to himself became a book (The Mediations) about how Stoicism served him well during times of hardship. Stoicism, he argued, would give us the type of mental fortitude needed to help us through the worst of times. So many pearls come from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations that I've narrowed down three main concepts. 

Define what you yourself can control, let everything else go.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” 

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – 

Marcus Aurelius, like other Stoics, would agree that worry is useless. It is best to focus only on what each of us can personally change (our opinions, goals, desires, actions, reactions). Do not try to control the things we can’t change (the past, the future, other people).

Live well while you yet live.

“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...”

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”

Marcus Aurelius would affirm that life is a gift that we must never diminish while we still breathe. We always have the option to exercise control over ourselves and our attitudes during tough moments. If we have a day left or 5 decades yet to live, live with much energy. 

Allow nothing to divide yourself from others.

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”

“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”

When times get tough, humans adore assigning blame and fault to others. We are all much more alike than we are different. Do everything you can to find unity with others. Reject the compulsion to seek division.