Antonio's Inexplicable melancholy

In the Merchant of Venice, Antonio was a hopelessly melancholic character who found it difficult to place a finger on the cause of his constant moodiness; thus his famous lament "I hold the world but as the world, A stage, where every man must play a part; And mine a sad one".

In Greco-Roman medical analysis of temperaments (psychology), there were 4 predominant temperaments in people known as the 4 "humors" that  being sanguine (pleasure-seeking, sociable, impulsive), choleric (ambitious, aggressive, leader-like), melancholic (introverted, over pondering, sad), and phlegmatic (calm, unemotional, sluggish). The 4 "humors" concept was based on the assumption that the body fluids (humors) within a person was responsible for his mood and personality . Thus Hippocrates described a melancholic person as having too much black bile thus the word "melan chole" in Greek, the phlegmatic person had much phlegm. Any excesses of a certain body fluid would cause some personality disorder. Treatment was in the form of medicine, diet or blood-letting using leeches.

I find myself a bit of an Antonio, as in sometimes I feel moody or anxious for no good reason. When I feel this way I will usually find a cause to justify my unease. It could be some situation not so desirable that I wish I could get rid of or something lacking which will make me happy. Very often melancholy arises out of boredom and anxiety out of existential angst perhaps.

Of late I have been trying my best to maintain a routine of meditating for about half an hour daily. During the first 15 minutes thoughts will come and go. Most thoughts that surface initially will be about jobs or chores that need to be done and little plans to carry them out. As these come and subside issues underlying the feeling of the day usually arise and I have to will myself to focus on my breath. So these thoughts come forth and retreat like the ebb of a tide. Sometime in the middle of the session with the aid of the regular and slow deep breathing the mind quietens down and the heart feels more at ease. In some snapshot moments I may come to some awareness that things around me are "Just what they are". There is nothing in the air or the cloudy sky or the trembling leaves to suggest gloom or nervousness. They are neutral and are just what they are, the environment and the situation; and whether I colour them gray or forlorn is all in my mind.

Studies have shown that meditation makes one less reactive to stress and pain. In fact MRI scans have found that with more hours of meditation, the meditator's emotional networks were less active during experimental distracting sounds, which meant it was easier for the meditator to focus. I strongly believe that it is not only being able to focus but also to have a clearer mind and shedding those tinted glass over one's eyes.

Surely meditation is also a more pleasant form of therapy than letting leeches feast on you.