REsources for Living
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We tend to talk about grief as the feeling that arises when someone we love dies. And certainly that’s a very real, potent cause of grief. But there are so many kinds of grief, small and large, that weave through our lives. As adults we tend to get good at tamping down our feelings of grief, reminding ourselves that they are “first world problems” or that others have it far worse than we do. Which may be true, but it could also be true that whatever our feelings, small or large, they are our feelings, worthy of recognition.
Children are certainly not born with any such qualms. Toddlers are notorious for screaming, melt-down tantrums over things that make no sense at all from an adult perspective. I asked friends for examples and got a wide range: Water is wet. I cut his pancakes wrong. The movie is Hercules, not Percules. The hot cocoa is hot—she wanted cold hot cocoa. If you’re a parent, you probably have any number of examples of your own. It turns out that the number of things that are a crisis when you are very young contains a massive variety of things.
And, yes, it’s incredibly annoying when you’re the parent dealing with a screaming fit over something that makes no sense. (I listened to a podcast in which a researcher recorded the enraged, agonized screams of a little girl who wanted to sit at the head of the table, but the table was round.) But we experience grief any time the world fails to meet our expectation of how things should be, and small children have not yet learned what reasonable expectations are for much of how the world works.
Of course, the same could be said of adults. We know, intellectually, that everyone dies—and not always when they are old. But that doesn’t stop us from feelings of rage as well as sadness when someone we love is taken from us too soon. We know that a significant percentage of relationships end in break-up, but that doesn’t change how we feel if a partner leaves or betrays us. We know that bodies are fragile, prone to illness and accident and aging, but when it is our own body that loses function, it’s only natural to grieve over abilities that we have lost.
Buddhism addresses this reality of human existence by teaching how to give up attachment—how to accept that change and loss is simply a part of life. All of us will experience pain and loss, but we can learn not to compound that pain and loss by trying to hold on to what is not permanent. Other religions have their own ways of addressing our grief and rage that things don’t turn out the way we wanted or expected: a promise that earthly sorrow is insignificant compared to the prospect of heavenly joy, the idea that suffering offers redemption, the idea that our own suffering connects us with the suffering of Christ on the cross.
Certainly there is no one UU theology of suffering, or answer to how to make religious sense from our grief. But we do affirm our human identity as story tellers and meaning makers. Suffering and grief happen in the inevitable way of life, without there necessarily being any kind of divine message involved.
But we have a unique ability as human beings to create meaning out of our grief. Parents of children killed in school shootings band together to promote gun control. Family members of a person who died young of a rare disease raise money for research for a cure. Rather than seeking revenge for the murder of a beloved family member, people turn instead toward restorative justice, toward having their grief heard and responded to in a way that feels meaningful and healing.
Of course, not all the stories we tell are so constructive. Grief can easily spiral into self-blame: If only I had followed through with my plan to call him that night, then he wouldn’t have taken his own life. If only I had driven a different route, then the accident never would have happened. If only I had looked different or weren’t so loud or so quiet or so difficult or so accommodating, then they would have loved me the way I hoped they would.
These stories of regret and self-accusation can leave us trapped in a spiral that piles self-loathing on top of loss. Grief is sharp and real and inevitable, but we can choose the stories that we tell about that grief, opting for stories of resilience and gratitude and possibility and the ongoing presence of love.
When we feel aggrieved because we haven’t gotten what we wanted, we can weave stories about learning and the creativity that comes from having to make a new way. While we grieve the vast suffering of injustice or the planetary crisis of climate change, we can tell stories of resistance, of the ways that we tried to build a better world.
None of our stories, our attempts to make meaning and sense of loss, will prevent suffering or free us from the pain of grief. But our stories can keep us stuck, raging that water is wet or cocoa is hot, or they can help us to move forward, carrying our grief with us toward some greater purpose. So much of what happens to us is beyond our choosing, painfully out of our control. But we have the choice to make meaning out of loss, to tell stories that comfort and heal and encourage growth as we embrace life.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
- A Fond Goodbye - December 1, 2020
- REsources for Living - November 1, 2020
