Grief and Love
"If we did not grieve, we would not love." - K.S.
We wouldn't normally put two polar opposite emotions in the same category, but in chapter three of Life Is Hard by Kieran Setiya, the two are beautifully placed together to help us understand what it means to grieve.
Grief is something that all of us will or have experienced at some point. It's this jagged, heavy feeling that everything is over and that everything is changing when you're not yet ready for it. And despite not being ready, the world still goes on. Everything looks the same but nothing really feels the same after someone you loved is gone. You're confused. This is because you have so much love for someone with nowhere for it to go, no recipient.
This is why the pain of grief feels so physical. That sharp ache in your chest when losing someone is the effect of your heart not knowing where to place the love you held for someone, because that love doesn't just go away when the person is gone.
Different Kinds of Grief
1. Relational grief - the absence of someone who was once a part of our daily lives.
2. Grief for the harm that has come to the one who died - sorrow for their suffering or the fact their life was cut short.
3. Grief for the mere loss of life itself - the sheer tragedy that a life that was once full of experiences and memories is now gone
These are the three kinds of grief that Setiya identifies. Most people have felt at least one of these, whether it was losing a loved one, a breakup, or a friendship that changed. In Setiya's case, his only major experience with grief has been watching his mother fade away with Alzheimer's disease. My experience is very similar, having also only dealt with grief in the form my grandmother's Alzheimer's. This kind of grief happens even before death, watching someone you love who was once full of joy face away while their memory and recognition capabilities deteriorate. Having to relearn someone entirely and to become familiar with a new version of someone you love is hard.
The Five Stages of Grief
Setiya disagrees. There's no evidence grief works like this. Grief is not something that conforms to a linear path. Grief is messy, moving in unreasonable waves, fading and returning when you least expect it. Grief never really ends, but we learn how to better live with it and ourselves after the loss of someone. Because Setiya doesn't believe in a theory of grief like Dr. Kubler's, he believes what we need is a practice for living with it. This is why conventions of mourning are so important. Funerals, memorials, or anniversaries give structure to the chaos of grief and allow us to express and process pain in ways words cannot.
Looking to the Dahomey people of Western Africa as an example, when someone dies, they don't grieve in silence or sorrow. They celebrate through drinking, dancing, singing, and dirty jokes. These rituals emphasize continuity. The person lost is still present in memory and tradition, their spirit still being a part of the community. I think this is a wonderful way to grieve someone you loved. I would rather celebrate the life of someone I loved than mope around for days on end.
Epictetus' Unreasonable Take on Grief
Epictetus said: when you're fond of something, like a jug, tell yourself "this is just a jug I'm fond of." that way when it breaks, you won't be upset. He continues going further: If you kiss your child or your spouse, remind yourself "this is a human being I'm kissing." Then, if they die you won't be upset.
Epictetus was a Stoic, if you couldn't tell by now. 
The stoics had two ways to avoid frustration:
1. Change the world to fit your desires
2. Change your desires to fit the world
In the case of death, you can't change the world or bring the person back, so the Stoic solution was to change yourself and detach. Setiya, and most people, argues against this. You can't outsmart an emotion as unavoidable as grief. Detachment isn't the goal with grief. Because if you detach enough to grieve, you also detach from the most meaningful emotion in life, love.
Final Thoughts
My favorite quote from chapter three and maybe all of Life Is Hard was at the top of this post, but I'd like for you to read it again: "If we did not grieve, we would not love." Grief isn't a flaw, but a sign we cared deeply. It's a sign that our lives are intertwined with others. Grief shows that something mattered.
When we love, we are obviously risking potential grief, that vulnerability gives power to the emotion of love. Author Julian Barnes wrote "the fact that someone is not alive does not mean that they do not exist." Grief keeps our lost loved ones alive within us as we carry their influence and memories forward. This is why it's important to not try and erase grief, but to live well with it knowing that loss is part of the price of love itself.
Grief is love taking on a new form.
"Grief never really ends" - In my experience of losing both parents in a span of five months back in '08, grief gives way to a feeling more like gratitude much more quickly than I'd have predicted. I smile when I think of them, and feel their lasting presence. That positive feeling displaced grief pretty quickly. I know that not everyone experiences such a rapid transmutation, though. But to those who've never yet experienced that kind of loss, I want to offer some reassurance that you'll likely get beyond the worst of it sooner than later.
ReplyDeleteNo real stoic would say "so what," but Epictetus and others have been a bit too breezy in their expression of acceptance. Accepting an inescapable reality is not the same as liking it, or of being indifferent towards it. And they know that. They also know that love and grief are twins. We should embrace both. And we should appreciate Barnes's point. My parents continue to exist in my mind and memory, and will in that of their grandchildren. And I have to believe that the good they accomplished will continue to have an impact on life in the future, long after anyone who knew them is still around. Human existence is larger than the span of a lifetime, or can be.