Melancholy

The Holy Spirit sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home.
(A Course in Miracles)

There is a promise in the spiritual literature that is pretty universal: peace is always yours if only you so choose. Maybe, maybe not would be my experience instead. We have set ourselves up to participate in a movie plot that allows us to advance to the next spiritual level. But the catch is, only understanding a concept intellectually doesn't cut it, you have to feel it in your bones as well. And you can only do that if you have lived through your fears, your ambitions, your disappointments and your peak experiences. Every depression you experience is followed by an orgasmic high and vice versa. You can try to reduce the fluctuations a little by insight, experience and conscientious living, but wishing your melancholy away unfortunately implies that you wish your spiritual progress away as well.

Joseph Schumpeter  had a similar insight in the area of economics. He argued that you need recessions to clear up the excesses of the previous boom to hand over the resources to the more entrepreneurial people at a lower cost so that they could start over again. So the fluctuations necessitate economic growth very much as your dark clouds set you up for the psychological break-through followed by the enthusiastic and perhaps slightly manic phase that gives you a glimpse at the heavens above.

This is your movie, it is conscious but it is also subconscious. You have a job to do that not always will feel good, but it will get you places both psychologically and spiritually. Accept your melancholy and understand it too has its spiritual purpose. Don't resist life, embrace it, the tears as well as the joys.  Before you know it you will be home.