So much suffering.So much death.So much sorrow.So much waste.
We're not built for this.
The days we find ourselves in are emotionally unsustainable.
Our bodies and minds aren't equipped for this kind of protracted pain, this prolonged period of elevated urgency, this perpetual cumulative loss.
That’s not how grief is supposed to work.
Normally, we grieve over a moment. When someone we love dies, they die one time and we spend the rest of our lives processing that singular event—but this is a daily subtraction, it is a perpetual death, a continual mourning. Every morning, there always seem to be more new things to lament the loss of. Many people now find themselves here, continually sitting vigil over dying things.
That means that we’re all playing hurt.
I wonder what you're grieving the loss of these days.It may be your idea of God or country or family.It may be your belief in the goodness of people.It may be a relationship with someone you once felt fully at home around.It may be your sense of optimism about the future.It may be the lightness you used to feel when you woke up in the morning.It may be every single one of these things, and more that you can't quite name right now.
Much of the time, we mistake this mourning for anger, but our quick tempers and impulsive outbursts are simply the mounting frustration finally boiling over, a violent pressure release for systems that are maxed out by despair.
Whatever you feel you're attending the funeral of right now, realize that this will not always leave you at your best. You might be more impatient with people, more prone to verbal explosions, more emotionally untethered. And while you don't want to allow this grief to become so internally toxic and make you only capable of rage, you also need to cut yourself some slack. Have a little mercy on yourself, because you (like all people in mourning) deserve that gentleness. Grief, after all is draining.
This universal loss is also something to remember, as we live alongside people, as we stare at them through smartphone screens, as we pass them on the street, as we rub shoulders with them at work, as we sit across from them at the kitchen table: most people are grieving right now too. Even those across from us politically or theologically are grieving too, they just have a different story they tell themselves about the causes.
It may seem like an impossible task right now, but you and I need to find ways to attend to the losses and to the cost of them on us physically, emotionally, mentally, relationally, and socially. We need to properly honor our grief, as unnatural as it is.
Our bodies and minds cannot hold this much sorrow while still expecting to stay buoyant enough not to sink beneath the weight of it all.
Let yourself grieve today so that you can stay alive.
How are you noticing, processing, and attending to your grief lately? Let me know in the comments.
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