Home » Feature » Art and Culture
Grief connects us all: Welcome to the club
Print Edition
UNDER the gravitas of COVID-19, it’s fair to say we all experienced a shift in how our world turns. Expectations, hopes and plans went out the window. In their place, uncertainty, fear and any notion of normality. Simply put, we’ve suffered.
Author and podcast creator Nora McInerny speaks openly about the difficult things in life. According to her, there’s a club for people who’ve been through something traumatic. It’s not exclusive. Anyone can join, and once in, a piece of you belongs to it forever. In fact, at some point or another, we all join. When the chips are down, tragedy strikes, or the world simply opens up to swallow us whole, this is where we go. Initiation takes many forms: a lost loved one, redundancy, ill health — anything that shakes the foundations of the house we’ve comfortably lived in. For many, COVID-19 is it.
Grief, a term many have used to describe our recent experience, is undeniably communal and yet deeply personal. Nobody is exempt, something those in the club know. Once inside, we understand that everybody is balancing on the tightrope of their own personal disaster, each vulnerable to a painful fall. Mine came in the form of depression and an eating disorder, conditions I used to think were reserved for people with less balance than me. Having shattered the illusion of exclusivity, there’s a new obstacle to navigate. Comparison. While grief is a shared experience, in its throes we still feel alone — certain no mortal, living nor dead, has felt our pain. As such, McInerny highlights the clubs only rule: no comparisons. Like all rules, it’s subject to change and frequently broken.
Recently I suggested a loved one find perspective over their anxiety about interrupted work flow during the pandemic: It could be worse. Granted, perspective is a valuable commodity. The death of a child isn’t comparable to the collapse of a business deal, being evicted isn’t the same as having to cancel your Netflix subscription. We each carry our own burden, the weight of which is unknowable to others. Being caught in whatever storm we’re in, is itself a perspective. Like all forms of weather, ours will change. But for now, the conditions are real. Asking someone to find perspective is another way of suggesting they adopt ours. Akin to telling them it’s hot out when they’re freezing to death.
Comparison leads to more pain, causing us to dismiss the experience of others or rush to fix their situation. And to fix is to pity. What’s more, this compulsion signals our need to distance, often because we’re uncomfortable with the suffering of others. Pity is empathy’s trashy cousin; a response filled with shortcuts, supplements and support group recommendations. Nobody wants pity, and the fear of it leads us to mutter those immortal words: “I’m fine.” What we need is to trust that exposing our weakness won’t end in judgment. That cracks on our path won’t be frantically filled in or compared with the cavities of others. The upshot? Only when we sit with a person’s pain do we empathize with it.
This year, people in the club have seen non-members experience how lonely it is to suffer. But pain has always been lonely. Because even when people could sit with us, not everyone did. And of those that showed up physically, not all were available emotionally. As tempting as it is, instead of waving VIP club cards in the faces of others, we must hold ourselves to account. Rather than underscoring our struggle or highlighting our hurt, we must make room for theirs. The trauma some people have experienced is new to them, but trauma is not new. Grief can feel isolating, when in fact it connects us all. No experience is infinite, and no feeling is final. As McInerny puts it; we are here now, we will not always be here.
But while we are, welcome to the club.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
