Why Does Feeling Calm Often Make Us Feel Sad?

I like to listen to a station on Pandora called Calm Meditation. Any chance I can get - even when driving in my car - to let the soothing relief of beautiful music wash over me, I'm going to take it.

As I was driving to pick up my daughter from preschool the other day, and listening to the station, a sense of melancholy overcame me. My veins felt heavy and my eyes prickled with tears. 

I didn't have anything to mourn at the time; it was a breezy but sunny early spring day and my mind had been full of adventuresome ideas. 

And then the music creeped in under my collar and wove its way through my heartstrings and my body ached for all the suffering in the world.

I recognized my feelings and I did not wallow. In fact, I took an opportunity to appreciate the sincerely mind-boggling capacity for me - for us - to feel such a range of emotions! Did you know that the Sanskrit language has 96 words for Love? It  makes sense to me.

But where did this sensation come from? The transcendant tunes in my car, naturally. All I had been after was a pleasant, disconnected reprieve from the day on my short drive to the school. Instead, I got a handful of achy-breaky heart. 

This sentiment doesn't occur when we listen to the pumped-up version of workout beats (pop, hip-hop, or dance music, usually.) I don't feel blue when my daughter's CD player gives me the 14th rendition of "Wheels on the Bus." {Okay, maybe a little sad; but a different kind of sad, to be sure!}

It's music. 

When we're excited, bouncing off the walls, jazzed up, ready to party -- it's certainly not Calm Meditation radio that we turn up to the 10th level.

Likewise, when we are feeling the need for a really good cry, the kind that leaves you feeling deliciously depleted and raw and open, we're certainly not going to turn on Raffy.

But my aim that day wasn't to cry, or need sadness (Yes, we can need sadness!). My aim was to feel calm. So, why does calm = melancholy?

My theory is that, in the calmness, it was okay to feel sad. That my soul felt comfortable shedding the public appreciation of Life itself. That I needed the reminder that peace can come from places other than happiness. 

I am so grateful for music.

In my book club, we are reading Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. What a brave, remarkable, eloquent book. You've never read music written so well in English letters. 

At one point the character Roxane, an opera singer, opens  her mouth to sing, which shocks everyone in the room.

"Their eyes clouded over with tears for so many reasons it would be impossible to list them all. They cried for the beauty of the music, certainly, but also for the failure of their plans. ...  All of the love and the longing a body can contain was spun into not more than two and a half minutes of song, and when she came to the highest notes it seemed that all they had been given in their lives and all they lost came together and made a weight that was almost impossible to bear. When she was finished, the people around her stood in stunned and shivering silence."

Have you ever been affected by music in this way?

What are your favorite songs to listen to, and why? Do you prefer a certain genre of music when you dance? When you create? When you move your body? 

Share your answers in comments below. I'm off to sway to something lovely.

xo
Emily