I have a theory I want to share.
This is the point when people who know me settle in to endure a long, unhinged rant based mostly on vibes, with a dusting of podcast science. Just so you know what you’re in for.
I want to talk about the loss of societal context/ritual/vocabulary for grief. Emotional intelligence has become a more widespread topic of conversation recently, so hopefully you already know what that is. In an anthropological sense, you observe a society’s level of emotional intelligence within the context of their shared context, ritual, and vocabulary around emotions. This is me, the nerdy lay-person talking about this, though. So take everything I say with a grain of salt.
I’m going to start by laying out some basics. 1) Humans are intrinsically emotional creature. This seems obvious. Emotions are part of being human– they are part of what defines us as human. 2) Humans are social creatures. We’re mammals, and we are in addition *highly social mammals* Shared experiences help us understand ourselves, define ourselves, and generally form human society at a foundational level. Without shared experiences, you don’t really have a society. 3) Historically, society has always had appropriate ways for expressing/experiencing/sharing human emotions. They change over time, of course. For example, we no longer consider it appropriate to challenge someone to a duel when one’s honor is offended. Now we just use social media to ruin their reputation.
Context: I’m going to start by talking about context because this one is the hardest for me to explain. The context of the emotion Grief usually involves a disruption, a tragedy, a breakdown. Something negative, possibly violent, definitely “wrong” has occurred. Because of this inevitable context of wrongness, Grief is highly associated with anger, guilt, blame, and probably a handful of other secondary negative emotions I’m not thinking of right in the moment. These emotions are so much easier to deal with because they sort of intrinsically contain Something to Do About It. Anger, guilt and blame all have a direction to go. They call you to action– to take revenge, to call out the perpetrator, to seek justice. Grief does not. Grief is just sitting there, in agony, waiting for the emotion to subside. Anger is easy. Grief is very very hard. In our modern American society, we take anger, blame, and guilt to Facebook, or the bash-the-boss Slack channel, or the girlfriend group text.
Ritual: But I want to acknowledge that this situation where Grief is passive is not always/has not always been the case. In ancient and indigenous cultures, there were/are socially acceptable Actions for Grief. There were manufactured rituals that gave us a place to act out our Grief, even if they were merely symbolic. Sackcloth and ashes, the rending of garments, shaving heads, weeping and wailing loudly in the street outside your house, or in the city gates. Or perhaps more familiar to our modern minds, a wake or a vigil. Those are still around in American subcultures, I realize, but they are much less visible or prevalent. And even where those practices still exist today, they are not the same welcoming space for openly and loudly expressed grief that they were once.
And so instead, grief is bottled up. Pressed down. Hidden. In our society, we don’t see people who are grieving. There is no public face of mourning. We don’t wear black, or rend our clothes, or shave our heads. We post a shared memory on Facebook about the dear departed, and then we move on with our lives. We offer “thoughts and prayers” to our devastated neighbors and then shower and go to work. But grief doesn’t work that way. Grief takes time. And the less time you give it, the longer it takes.
Vocabulary: At the most basic level, grief has been denied us in our very vocabulary. For real though: when was the last time you heard that word before you read the title of my blog post right here? When did you last hear someone share that they were mourning? Have you ever used the word “weeping” in a sentence? In a moment recently when I needed more vocabulary for grief, Brene Brown’s book “Atlas of the Heart” reminded me of the word Anguish. That word has pretty much disappeared from modern vocabulary (unless you’re like writing a paper for English class, or something), but I desperately needed it to describe what was happening to me.
Words have power– as any decent grounding in fantasy literature will tell you. When you can name something, you take away much of its power over you. Losing our shared language around grief has robbed us of too much of our ability to endure its power over us. If you are grieving, here are some of the words I wish I could give back to you:
Weep, sob, keen, wail, rend, ache, desolate, yearning, bereft, lost, unraveled, lament, mourn, hollow, shattered, echo, longing, anguish.
