Emotions & Obsessions

Culture Differences in Grieving

It came up in conversation with a few people yesterday about cultural differences after a loss. In some places, the families wail openly in the streets and the community comes out to support and mourn with them. In the US, we put on black, sit through a somber service, and then head home where it's expected the families deal with our "sadness" privately. Let's just be honest right here and say if you believe that people mourning the loss of a loved on are just "really sad" all day, that is way WAY off base...

Painful Obsessions

A friend said something after this that hit home for me:
We're allowed to be obsessed with a sports team, with an actor or musician; we're allowed to be obsessed with food. It's ok if that obsession lasts for decades. Sometimes the person has an obsession so intense that people may not understand but they give flexibility: we anoint them as 'foodies', 'groupies', 'sports fanatics', etc. and while we may not be in the same boat we nod our heads and acknowledge that's their "thing".

Because there is happiness in doing that 'thing' that can consume their life.

For whatever reason, we're not allowed to be obsessed with something as emotional as losing a soulmate, losing a child, losing a best friend or a parent, etc. It's not ok that the thing consuming our life is riddled with the emotions of despair, loneliness, pain and abandonment. If our friend ignores our phone calls repeatedly every time the game is on, we forgive them for that, but we don't stop calling. But when the tables turn and the calls are ignored because our obsession is on other non-happiness emotions, then people walk away.

Necessary Emotions

Why is the emotion of happiness ok but sadness not? Can you have happiness without sadness, loneliness, or discomfort? Can you understand relief or joy without pain? It reminded me of the theme of the book "The Giver".

Scraping your knee is a necessary part of being a child. We tease kiddos about crocodile tears and tell them to get up and keep going; gently done, that's a good lesson to learn. And when bodies break we do our best to support people; we may not know what it feels like to have a broken arm or the pain of being cut open for surgery or recovering after the birth of a child but we still bring those people bring dinner, tell them jokes, take them out for coffee or beer, draw silly things on their casts, run with them as they get their strength back, etc.

So why do we discard another human being when their heart and their mind have broken so intensely (eons more painful than a broken bone or being cut open --- I say with experience) just because we claim we can't understand?