They say that today, the third Monday in January, is Blue Monday or the saddest day of the year, but is that a bad day? Why do we live in a world where we are forbidden to be sad? Moreover, is there true joy without having experienced sadness first?
The factors that were used at the time for the invention of this unfortunate date by a travel agency to promote its products were, among others, the coincidence of being a hated Monday, in the cold and dark winter in the northern hemisphere, with the current account in the red in the middle of January, far from the vacations and when you have already realized that you will not be able to fulfill the resolutions you made in the new year.
So, if you woke up this morning with a bad body, with little desire to face the day, everything around you is bothering you and you just want to stay at home with your blanket or on the couch, without putting up with anyone; don't panic, it's just Blue Monday.
Perhaps scheduling a trip, as was the intention of the promoters of the commemoration, will calm their troubles; but most likely it will not be for long either, because it is already known that the happiness promised by consumerism lasts only the very short period of time it takes for the market to convince us that we have a new need.
If my experience helps you to face periods of depression, I usually remind myself of the famous verse of Martín Descalzo: "to die alone is to die, to die is the end..."; because, isn't sadness a kind of death of being? When one is sad or suffers for something, doesn't one value life less? Taken to the extreme, the suicidal person erroneously thinks that physical death itself is better than that death in life that is having an aching heart. "Suffering is only suffering, suffering is over", I repeat to myself in moments of desolation, together with the famous Teresian: "nothing can disturb you, nothing can frighten you, everything will pass...". It is only a question of time.
What has happened to the pain threshold of our welfare society that keeps dropping? The more developed populations are, the less prepared their members are to withstand the slightest setback. It is curious to see how, just as nature so often rebels against human arrogance in its attempt to tame it, so too our organism, specifically our mental health, seems to be sending out a warning message.
Why is it that societies that insist on eliminating suffering are the ones that consume the most anxiolytics and antidepressants? We no longer go hungry, nor do our children die of a simple diarrhea, nor do we have lions attacking us, as has happened for millennia; so our brain, not having these unforeseen negative events, interprets the slightest sign of stress in an exaggerated way. Just as allergies are now triggered by the immune system's lack of work due to our reduced exposure to infections, depression and stress are nature's response to a secure lifestyle where uncertainty has been reduced.
Could it be that, to some extent, some suffering is good for life? I don't know if this hypothesis has a scientific basis or not, but we all know people whose lives have been catapulted forward by cancer, an accident or the death of a child, changing their lives for the better, facing them with more hope and, almost always, by giving more to others.
The famous psychiatrist Marian Rojas is an advocate of the right to be sad. She states that "sadness is a natural and healthy emotion that is part of the human experience, an emotional response to situations that affect us negatively and suppressing it only prolongs its impact on our mental health".
In this sense, I find particularly striking the fact that children's stories, tales, series or cinema elude pain as if it were not a part of reality, no matter how much one wants to fight it. I perfectly remember the lump in my throat before the wickedness of the Wolf, the orphanhood of Bambi, the abandonment of Heidi, the loneliness of Marco or the death of Chanquete and I am sure that these vicarious experiences served me and continue to serve me to face the many and very painful trials with which life has rammed me.
The most important things in life are achieved after enduring hard and sometimes long moments of pain, sadness and hardship; but then they pass and the time comes to enjoy them. We say, in fact, that it is "worth it" to study, to raise a family, to serve the community, to develop a professional career, to practice healthy habits....
Pope Francis went deeper into this idea in one of his audiences: "Let us think of work, study, prayer, a commitment we have made: if we were to give them up as soon as we felt boredom or sadness, we would never complete anything. This is also an experience common to the spiritual life: the path to the good, the Gospel reminds us, is narrow and uphill, it requires a struggle, a conquest of oneself". And he recommended to us: "It is important to learn to read sadness: do we know how to understand what this sadness means for me today? In our time, sadness is mostly considered in a negative way, as an evil to flee at all costs, and yet it can be an indispensable alarm bell for life, inviting us to explore richer and more fertile landscapes that transience and evasion do not allow".
So if you are sad today, or have been sad for a while, you have every right in the world to stop by, no matter how much social networks force us to always seem jovial. Immerse yourself in the deep blue of blue Monday and you will see that, deep down, there is Someone who suffers with you, who does not leave us alone. Someone who, out of love, has wanted to descend with every human being to the limits of pain to accompany and rescue him, to give meaning to meaninglessness. Someone who has explained to us that happiness is in giving oneself to others, not in seeking oneself.
We have just celebrated the birth of "God with us" and, sooner rather than later, the celebrations of his passion and death will be here. Then, and now, we must not lose hope that dying ends with the ultimate joy of the resurrection. So, Happy Blue Monday, but let us not stop loving, let us not stop hoping.
Journalist. Graduate in Communication Sciences and Bachelor in Religious Sciences. He works in the Diocesan Delegation of Media in Malaga. His numerous "threads" on Twitter about faith and daily life have a great popularity.
