Contemplation: Good or Bad?

What is contemplation? Contemplation comes from the Latin root templum, and means to separate something from its environment. In a religious sense it is a type of prayer or meditation. In a non-religious sense, contemplation means “to think steadily” or “to consider with attention”. We hear about it being an act of positive self affirmation, or thinking positively or neutrally about something, hell even ‘Navajo’ (a band) has dedicated an entire album to contemplative music.
But is contemplation a good thing, when it only leaves our hearts aching? When it leaves us crying? When it raises questions we don’t want to answer? Where else can we draw the line between negative and positive contemplation but the line at which we decide what makes us happy.

Yet it’s not so black and white.

How do we know what makes us happy, when so often it also makes us sad? Why is it that love is filled with happiness but it also is overflowing with sadness?… Why is it that thinking about being happy often leaves us dejected and gloomy, with an ache in the heart that doesn’t go away?… I guess the only answer to this riddle is that there is no answer… And that the only thing that will provide even a ounce of sense is contemplation itself…

"Look at the flowers, so faithful to what is earthly,
to whom we lend fate from the very border of fate.
And if they are sad about how they must wither and die,
perhaps it is our vocation to be their regret.

All Things want to fly. Only we are weighed down by desire
caught in ourselves and enthralled with our heaviness.
Oh what consuming, negative teachers we are
for them, while eternal childhood fills them with grace.

If someone were to fall into intimate slumber, and slept
deeply with Things-:how easily he would come
to a different day, out of the mutual depth.

Or perhaps he would stay there; and they would blossom
and praise
their newest convert, who now is like one of them,
all those silent companions in the wind of the meadows."

Sorry about that… Just had to get it off my chest… Plus I needed a distraction from my incredibly boring music assignment…

Forget-me-not

Ciao xxx

P.S. Hehehe my father is thinking about doing some more post grad. work... Specifically, the effects of music on the maintenance of depression in adolescent males... That could be a very interesting read....