/ A state of seclusion, lack of contact… /
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And pitch perfect cosmic representation of it, better known as
Remarkable footage captured by the ESA Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Solitude is a state of seclusion or isolation, or in other words: lack of contact with people. It may stem from bad relationships, loss of loved ones, deliberate choice, infectious disease, mental disorders, neurological disorders or circumstances of employment or situation. Short-term solitude is often valued as a time when one may work, think or rest without being disturbed. It may be desired for the sake of privacy. A distinction has been made between solitude and loneliness. In this sense, these two words refer, respectively, to the joy and the pain of being alone. There are both positive and negative psychological effects of solitude. These effects and the longevity is determined by the amount of time a person spends in isolation. The positive effects can range anywhere from more freedom to increased spirituality, while the negative effects are socially depriving and may trigger the onset of mental illness.
While positive solitude is often desired, negative solitude is often involuntary or undesired at the time it occurs.
Solitude does not necessarily entail feelings of loneliness, and in fact may, for those who choose it with deliberate intent, be one’s sole source of genuine pleasure. In religious contexts, in preferred silence and found immense pleasure in their perceived uniformity with God.
Solitude is a state that can be positively modified utilizing it for prayer allowing:
To be alone with ourselves and with God, to put ourselves in listening to his will, but also of what moves in our hearts, let purify our relationships; solitude and silence thus become spaces inhabited by God, and ability to recover ourselves and grow in humanity.
µέλαινα χολή
melaina chole
black bile, blackness of the bile
Melancholia is a mental condition characterized by extreme depression, bodily complaints, and sometimes hallucinations and delusions. Melancholia is a concept from ancient or pre-modern medicine. Melancholy was one of the four temperaments matching the four humours. In the 19th century, “melancholia” could be physical as well as mental, and melancholic conditions were classified as such by their common cause rather than by their properties. It is the predecessor of the mental health diagnosis of clinical depression and still exists as a subtype for major depression known as melancholic depression.
The name “melancholia” comes from the old medical belief of the four humours: disease or ailment being caused by an imbalance in one or more of the four basic bodily liquids, or humours. Personality types were similarly determined by the dominant humor in a particular person. According to Hippocrates and subsequent tradition, melancholia was caused by an excess of black bile, hence the name, which means “black bile”, from Ancient Greek μέλας (melas), “dark, black” and χολή (kholé), “bile”. In the complex elaboration of humorist theory, it was associated with the earth from the Four Elements, the season of autumn, the spleen as the originating organ and cold and dry as related qualities. In astrology it showed the influence of Saturn, hence the related adjective saturnine. Melancholia was described as a distinct disease with particular mental and physical symptoms in the 5th and 4th centuries BC.
Hippocrates, in his Aphorisms, characterized all “fears and despondencies, if they last a long time” as being symptomatic of melancholia. Hippocrates include: poor appetite, abulia, sleeplessness, irritability, agitation. Despite the early age, the Hippocratic clinical description of melancholia shows significant overlaps with contemporary nosography of depressive syndromes (6 symptoms out of the 9 included in DSM diagnostic criteria for a Major Depressive.
A person whose constitution tended to have a preponderance of black bile had a melancholic disposition.
