I scorn to change my state with kings

From Sonnet #29 by William Shakespeare

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Two thoughts. First is: Don't the first nine lines sound like so much of the public discourse today? People bemoaning their sorry state when virtually everyone is dramatically better off than they were thirty years ago and unimaginably better off than a hundred years ago. Everyone has a sad song and that sad song is always about what more they want and how unfair it is that they fall short of their manufactured desires.

Then there is the solace of the last five lines. In his sonnets at least, Shakespeare seems to offer that the antidote to melancholia is passionate connection with another person.

I follow that train of thought with the observation that one of the distinctive features of the past fifty years has been everyone becoming materially far better off but perceiving themselves as being worse off. At the same time, we have seen more and more people becoming disconnected from one another; fewer intact families, lower and later marriage rates, higher relationship turn-over, etc. Is there some connection between our eroding capacity to become passsionately enthralled with another person and our own melancholia, our self-manufactured sad songs? Is it possible that we need to lose ourselves in another in order to gain all the things that we have?