IS IT REALLY WELL WITH YOUR SOUL?

 Quick disclaimer: This is a blog that shouldn’t have been. I have been ridiculously uninspired to write lately and i got a reminder that this blog doubles up as my elite diary. This is one of those ‘Dear Diary’ entries that has found its way to you because I believe we are all so intricately connected, you just might relate.

The plan has been to write a story on humanism, not as a philosophical topic but as simple devotion to human welfare. The past one month has however been a series of sad and tragic news of death that is really overworking to familiarize itself with me. Death has clouded my mind so much in two weeks, way more than I have had to think about it for over twenty years of my life. After much thought, I could only describe the human story as one of loving and losing.

A certain guy I know went to study at Trinity College in Cambridge. He was a poet and joined the prize poem competition while at Cambridge. There, he met Arthur who was also a poet . A strong friendship sparked between them so much so that Arthur even spent Christmas with his family. The two poets even planned to publish a book of poems together. I think the friendship needed to be sealed into the covenantal ‘ Friends who became family’ and Arthur fell in love with my guy’s sister Emily. After a while the two were in fact engaged and ready to get married .

Arthur however tragically died of a stroke when he was 22. A death that was absolutely devastating for his friend. In trying to come to terms with his grief, my guy wrote an elegy for his friend. This poem is titled ‘In Memoriam’ and was written between 1833- 1850 when it was eventually published.

My guy’s name is Alfred Lord Tennyson. He was the most renowned poet of the Victorian Age. Yes! I do know him from history and literature. Since you’ve come this far, please hold the line and see what this guy has to do with you. You can always trust a poet to make sense of feelings we have and try articulate them in the most relatable way.

In Memoriam seems to have been poetic therapy for Alfred Tennyson. In his mourning, he fell into an existential crisis where he questioned man’s place in the vast universe and had questions on Religion. Further, he observed the apparent mismatch between elaborate public memorials and funerary ritual and the private experience of grief. In the poem, he revealed his anxiety about making his grief public. He feared it felt wrong given that the intensity of the feeling is one that could never be fully revealed in words.

Picture this man in 1800s mirroring our experiences in the 21st century. His dilemma is one we still experience today only that ours has additional drama with social media replacing a poem which for him was his public expression of grief. If this isn’t the beauty of humanity, then I do not know what is. That even with all possible differences we could highlight, we are all so much alike.

I am no psychologist neither do i purport to have experienced grief and unpacked it well enough to make sense of it. Here are however a few things I am strongly convicted of:

1. Grief is love. 

The grief will last for as long as we love somebody. It is not really the sad feeling we have but rather the love that we cannot channel to someone. Love with nowhere to go. Love we wish to give but cannot.

I figured you may not have come across In Memoriam, as a poem, but there is one quote from the same you definitely know. 

It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

2. You cannot get over the loss of someone you loved.

You might adjust to the grief but you will not get over the death of a loved one. You , in fact, are not willing to get over it . What time does, is allow us to adjust and structure our new lives around the loss . We may seem to have moved on because , life goes on but it’s never the same. New people come into our lives but nobody takes the place in our hearts in the same shape as the people we lost did. 

Death will change your life forever and let nobody tell you that time will take things back to what they were. Grief is not a task to finish. It will alter your life forever but it does get better by the day.

3. Time does in fact heal.

Death essentially breaks our hearts. Sometimes they are totally shattered. Time will however do the magic. We evolve from a point of denial and disbelief slowly into accepting that our loved one’s are gone till we can march forward with their memories so dearly etched in our hearts.

If you cry yourself to sleep and wake up with a lump on your throat and the same empty feeling, better days will come. If you are able to have happy moments and you catch yourself feeling guilty for the hearty laugh as if you didn’t care that they are not here to laugh with you, open up to the world and all the joy that life brings. For anyone who may have gone through it and now confidently faces life but with the treasured  memory of their loved ones, they are proud you carried on. 

LOVE AND LIGHT TO ALL OF YOU!