Grief

"Grief is the agony of an instant, the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life. "
Benjamin Disraeli, British politician (1804 - 1881)

What bliss - the unapologetic heat of Accra, the irresistible taste of my mother's cooking and the general restfulness of this holiday. Amidst all of this, there is the sense that grief abounds, with stories of deaths and injuries being told with increasing frequency. The inevitable consequence of these tragic events is grief. When we lose something or someone, we grieve. We may grieve for days for months or for years. Some people may actually grieve for the rest of their lives. With grief, there is no right and wrong. You grieve until you have stopped grieving.

Or is that really so?

What is the effect of grief on your life, on the people around you, on the people you love you, who depend on you? Over a few weeks or months, even full-scale grief can be absorbed and indeed, it may be cathartic to let the grief take its course. When the grief persists at full strength for a longer and longer period, then there may be something else at play. Our minds have a tendency to become comfortable in grief, to almost savour the pain, the delicious feeling of tragedy and victimhood, the attention and sympathy that we get, the sense that we have been dealt a cruel blow by life, a sense of being a protagonist in a drama. It is a paradox, but there is a trap in grief, one that is so close to a natural, honourable human experience that it is very easy to fall into and difficult not to sympathise with. But this may well be what is termed a life blunder...

"While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it. "
Samuel Johnson, English author, critic, & lexicographer (1709 - 1784)