I saw this sign today in my therapist’s office…read it and almost started crying right there on the spot. In the last few years all of this and more has happened and I realized that I don’t know how to grieve very well. I don’t think our society does either. Watch what happens in a group if someone loses it and starts to cry…immediately someone grabs a tissue and someone either leads them out or puts an arm around them. This is an attempt to “interrupt” the emotion. We intuitively want to shut it down because we don’t approve of it, it makes us feel uncomfortable, and maybe exposes just how close we all are at times to losing it.
I have watched other cultures grieve and it’s pretty amazing, sometimes even laughable from my western perspective but probably a heck of a lot healthier than what we do! From professional wailers to elaborate funeral settings or grand send offs it makes our 30 minutes of stiff upper lip and then cut and run funerals seem trite…like the person wasn’t even worth shedding a tear for and we can’t step away from our busy lives long enough to be bothered. The problem with this is what it puts in our minds…that we won’t matter when we go. Will anyone even remember us? Will our few friends have a potluck dinner with warmed over spaghetti and casseroles, some mystery jello dishes and a few donated pies and then be on their way? Is that what our value is? Many people don’t believe there is anything after death, I happen to believe there is but even if that is true, our ceremonies leave a lot to be desired.
Maybe it’s the American way, maybe it’s our current culture of new new new and Facebook selfies and always recording every workout and making everyday seem like you are crushing it…I’m not writing this just about grief with death but about grief with all the things on that list above and more. We lose a marriage, a friendship, a business, a relationship, our health, a lifestyle or even a pet and wait for people to say the most inane things to help us deal with our pain as quick as possible and move on with it. Here’s the problem, we don’t do it for the health of the individual, we do it because we are so uncomfortable dealing with someone who has lost something or is hurting. The reason is maybe just maybe because it exposes something that we don’t want to look at in ourselves…those things that we think we are over….we aren’t! May never be, but the denial kills us, it’s keep up the smiles, keep them laughing, the show must go on but we know ourselves less and less because we aren’t allowed to be.
This idea that we arrive, graduate, win, get saved, get sober fill in the blank and then it’s all fine…it’s BS and everyone will tell you on the surface that they know it’s not true, that people fail all the time that we never arrive and no one is perfect…but watch what happens when someone admits to this. It’s awful, it’s graceless…we do eat our own whether it’s churches or business, relationships or politics, the inability for us to allow other people to be human kills us all. Like hens in a hen house, show any sign of weakness and it’s death by a thousand pecks, jabs, jokes or just our unwillingness to let someone “be” long enough for them to adjust to the seismic shift that they’ve had go on in their life. So what do we do? We keep up appearances, smile for the camera, work harder, take more medicine, take another vacation, buy another toy, eat some more, or numb the pain anyway possible.
I’m not making this stuff up the medical records, suicide attempts, pharmaceutical gold mine with antidepressants etc is all you need to look at to see that it’s not “them out there” who is suffering…it’s us right here. Maybe your spouse maybe your best friend, maybe your business partner or maybe even yourself. We are the groaning masses who hide behind televisions and booze and staying busy to block the pain. We are the ones who hate weakness’s we see in others because it reflects what we know to be true about ourselves and we are the ones holding up the tent, paying the clowns and acting out this three ring circus where the marquee reads ~everything’s fine~.
So here we go, I’ll just say it, I’ll say the emperor has no clothes…everything is not always ok. Sometimes life can really hurt, sometimes those we think are guarding our back stab it and sometimes we get the crap kicked out of us and need more than a moment to be ok. If we can’t grant each other the grace to get up again, to fail, to make mistakes, to lose something, to not always win, then we are denying our own humanity and the thing that makes us wonderful, joyful, full of life people. I’m here, I’m not ok…but that is ok, because just being vulnerable enough to say that – is the first step to begin really living