How are we affected by the soul of the world?

J. T. Knoll writes "The halo of melancholy" for morningsun.net, Pittsburgh, Kansas today. He shares, "In addition to life’s daily struggles, my heart grows heavy with the plight of the working poor, the mentally ill, the homeless, the hungry children — the dispossessed — right here in Kansas from whom services continue to be withdrawn even as tax breaks for the well-to-do are being proposed.'" While wondering if growing older contributes to feeling low, he quotes Thomas Moore.

"Thomas Moore puts it this way in his book, Care of the Soul: 'You get a sense of having lived through something, of being older and wiser. You know that life is suffering, and that knowledge makes a difference. You can’t enjoy the bouncy, carefree innocence of youth any longer, a realization that entails both sadness because of the loss, and pleasure in a new sense of self-acceptance and self-knowledge. This awareness of age has a halo of melancholy around it, but it also enjoys a measure of nobility.'"

Knoll then writes about Abraham Lincoln's gloominess and sense of humour.