Spice of Life | Making peace with grief, learning to live with it
This isn’t passive resignation but an active choice to embrace reality as it is, with its imperfections and limitations. By accepting what we cannot change, we free up energy to focus on what we can influence and find contentment in the present.
I wish I were a child again because skinned knees were better than broken hearts.
This poignant sentiment often echoes in the mind when we grapple with emotional pain. The simplicity of childhood hurts, though physically tangible, lack the lingering complexity and profound impact of emotional wounds. A scraped knee healed relatively quickly, leaving behind a scar that served as a reminder of a fleeting adventure. Broken hearts, however, can leave invisible scars that take far longer to mend and can shape our future relationships and perspectives.
It often happens that our pain seems unjustified to us. We feel that the punishment far outweighs our errors. This situation arises when we give too much importance to our own self. Psychologically, this self-focus can stem from our inherent need for self-preservation and our subjective experience of reality. Our own feelings are immediate and intense, making it challenging to objectively compare them to the experiences of others.
Even a casual glance around is sufficient to shake us out of the self-centred approach towards pain and suffering. It forces us to shake ourselves out of personal grief.
Once we step out of the cocoon that we have woven around us, we can selflessly realise the pain. It was Siddhartha (later, Gautam Buddha) who realised that the world is full of dissatisfaction and unhappiness once he left his palace. His sheltered life had shielded him from the realities of aging, sickness, and death. Witnessing these universal human experiences shattered his illusions and propelled him on the path to enlightenment.
It is by seeing things in the larger perspective, we often see our personal grief dwarfed and even vanished after a while. As poet and preacher Baba Farid put it, “Farida main janya dukh mujhko, dukhi sabhaye jag, uchche charrh ke dekheya, taan ghar ghar ehi agg (Farid, I thought I was in trouble, the whole world is in trouble. When I climbed the hill and looked around, I saw this fire in each and every home).” He uses the metaphor of climbing to a vantage point to illustrate the shift in perspective.
Grief is entirely subjective. But while handling the emotion, we should not stretch it so much that it covers the whole gamut of life. Instead, learn to live with it because forgetting is not easy. Trying to suppress or ignore grief can often be counterproductive, leading to unresolved emotional burden. Learning to live with it involves acknowledging its presence, integrating it into life’s narrative, and finding ways to move forward without being defined by it.
It is from the acknowledgement of grief, that we gain the emotional fuel which allows us to begin to have new thoughts. This doesn’t happen overnight and we shouldn’t rush it.
Through acceptance instead of wanting to have something, we learn to want what we have. This isn’t passive resignation but an active choice to embrace reality, with its imperfections and limitations. By accepting what we cannot change, we free up energy to focus on what we can influence and find contentment in the present moment. amritbir1509@gmail.com
The writer is a freelance contributor
