Melancholy: The "Happiness of Being Sad"

1. Upload your sketchnotes to a blog post.

2. Check out these "untranslatable words" for sadness and write about your personal experience with one of them. One of the most powerful is...

Koev halev (Hebrew)

This refers to a certain kind of empathy. If you can't watch people suffering or miserable, particularly if you love them, because you feel it so strongly yourself — to the point of causing you serious physical pain — then this is the term for you.

Relating to my personal experience, as I am witnessing the sickness that one of my family member, who is in China, suffering, who fight against the virus, I felt the extreme sadness and empathy, since I felt a profound love for her, to the point that I want to take all the pain away from her.

3. Check out these quotes on melancholy. Choose your favorite and illustrate it with an original photo (you have taken) or sketch.

“Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.” ― Italo Calvino

4. The poet Keats wrote a poem called "Ode to Melancholy". Read it and check out the Sparknotes explaining it. What is your favorite line from the poem and why?

Favorite line:

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;     And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,

This line from the poem allows the audience to perceive the message that the “temple of Delight" merely is visible if one can overcome oneself with joy until it exhibits its center of sadness