A Melancholy Man’s Relentless Battle, Through the Lens of the Tetons

A series of sharp pyramids of naked rock, the peaks stand like sharks’ teeth against the sky. 

Soaring over a landscape rich with wildlife, pristine lakes, and majestic alpine vistas…they embody imagination and enduring human connection. 

Unlike most other great mountain ranges, the Tetons rise steeply from the flat valley floor in a straight unbroken line.

A couple of snippets from www.nps.gov, that capture the grandeur of the Teton Range.  For me, the Tetons are THE mountains of my imagination, with jagged mountains rising from pristine, turquoise-colored glacial lakes.  Breath taking, awe inspiring. 

While the beauty is intoxicating, it’s the Teton’s geological history that I resonate with.  Per planetgeo.com, the Tetons are restless mountains…cast in a relentless battle…actively facing the forces that lift them up while resisting the forces that wear them down.  (Bolding is mine.)    

The planetgeo duo share the mountains raise due to seismic disaster, while continuing to face the “forces that wear things down” – weather and erosion, relentlessly grinding things down.  The duo contrasts the Tetons to their brother range, the Rocky Mountains whose uplifting is done and are now in the perpetual process of getting knocked down.

I admit – this geologic imagery captures my on-going melancholy psychological battle.  A relentless battle of commitment to growth, change, purpose, action, while facing the on-going forces that wear me down.  Continually resisting the desire to curl into a ball, to recede, to surrender.  A relentless battle that is hard to understand IF you aren’t living it!   

I take comfort from Victor Frankl, renown psychiatrist, “What man actually needs is not a tension-less state but rather the striving and struggling of a worthwhile goal."

I take comfort from Abraham Lincoln, who suffered from “melancholy.”   Per Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln also had a great desire to accomplish something and to find some meaning in his life, even if it sometimes felt like torture. In order to be productive, Lincoln began to establish daily routines of learning, of working, of doing. He discovered, as so many who suffer from depression do, that having a routine, whether it is work, voluntarism or just a daily task list, forces a person to just keep going on, despite the brain’s message to quit or ruminate.

For me, the solution is a continual process of PLAN – ACT – ASSESS – RESTART, with trusted accountability partners who somehow can accept my frequent gloominess.