What to do about grief

We finished early this afternoon, so I went to the new school and checked out a few things to prepare and so on. I’m a bit overwhelmed still, but it will get better as I tuck in to the new materials.

In the afternoon I’ve been home, I watched Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me (2007) with Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle and honestly it made me laugh and cry, like I haven’t in a long time. It also got me thinking about grief. There’s so much of it in the world every day, and we’re constantly being distracted by the next thing, so that our attention is focused on the next big tragedy. Yesterday, it was the massive earthquake in Sichuan, and today it is the senseless stabbing deaths of seven innocent people on a busy street in Japan.

Our attention, like the news that is brought to us every second, flits from here to here to here… ad infinitum. So what happens to those orphaned children, what happens to those husbands who have lost wives to genocide, to malaria? What happens to those starving people with bloated bellies and flies they don’t have the energy to sweep away?

Our response is always urgent, heart-felt. But we expect results too fast, wanting the people to be happy again immediately, to live life again.

Perhaps, what we don’t realise is that in their own way, and in the way that life happens, the tragedy is being dealt with. But they so need help. And when we rush them, we’re forcing our own selfish desires on them.

It got me thinking that sometimes, the best thing to do in reaching out is to stand back. To provide, be it materialistically or emotionally, but be calm enough that we’re who they need us to be too.

And it’s got me thinking about what I would do in the situation. It’s a terrifying thought.

And about letting in the unexpected… that’s for another post, another time, when I’m not feeling so incommunicable.