It perhaps is only the pervasive range of grief that renders it so eloquent among the gamut of emotions that essentially shrouds every animate being at some point of their existence. That indeed is an irony in keeping- in its forlorn grimaces, grief harbours the doctrine of life. Ponder over how some of the saddest lines of literature are also some of its most beautiful and you will begin to covet this dual characteristic of grief that lends it beyond the mere paradigms of distinctive singularities. There is a charm in melancholy too rosy to not have it innately translate into such musings and ruminations that can stir the most hardened of spirits and the most hackneyed of souls. But when much have been emphasised on what grief and melancholy and pensiveness can lead to- much beauty in the face of much desolation, perhaps there remains a lacuna to fill when it comes to interpreting grief in not wordy but rather worldly terms.
Because words can be an escape from reality even when stemming from the pages of life, grief somehow gets elevated into something extraordinary in the pursuit of literary finesse. Because there is a certain affinity for creativity when the heart is full, we tend to pour out the most stirring of verbose lucidity at our gloomy best. And that’s where we often end up romanticising grief, instead of nursing the wound it imprints on us that leads us into the deeper vortex of it from where there sometimes exists not even an appalling way out.
Why this penchant to derive something fulfilling from a despair as potent as grief itself is a question best left for some other day. But in its totalitarian effect on living entities, grief haunts not just by overwhelming the heart that leads us to cry tears of remorse and sorrow. Even in its haunting silence, the annals of grief forever traverses a deafening cacophony of incoherent thoughts. Grief hollows you from within, at times even making you numb to the very source of it. And while that might seem like an improbable win we have scored over grief by subjecting it to such grievances we think we have addressed, what we are actually experiencing is the complete opposite.
In its murky tradings and mushy treadings, grief renders us susceptible to a world full of vices. And perhaps among its most traditional assertations, one that remains sheepishly embroiled but in its own dynamic diatribe is the accompanying grudge of regret. But you wonder, how can regret be a grudge? Isn’t regret rather the letting go of all grudges to instead dwell in a realisation that leads to acceptance? In its heart wrenching premise, regret is no less any captivity for the soul itself. It wrings the life out of you, making you revisit every instance in the past where you could have been someone different from what you chose to be. It leaves you with a painful longing for such amends that you cannot make even if you give your heart and soul to it. In leaving you yearning for something that is but only almost nonachievable, regret corrodes your conscience from within. And because regret stems so much from grief and in fact lends it to to the latter to make it more poignant, it remains the forever ally of suffering and distress.
But while regret can and indeed does leaves you with nothing of your own to covet, grief does not come with only this underlying guilt. The abyss of paramount darkness that it itself is, grief often lends itself to making you feel drained and despaired. The rhetoric persuasions that grief hinges on to force you deeper and deeper into its dismal depths is in itself a stoic perusal of the lathering your inner self comes cushioned in. In poring deep into the soul, grief triggers such set mechanics of your emotional being that you never knew could have been unleashed. While it is a notion common that grief renders us sober in the extent of our aggression, the opposite can also be as much a truthful encounter. Grief seemingly plunders our all but it also unleashes somewhat of a gothic spirit within us that leads us to destruct and destroy not just others, but most frighteningly ourselves.
Grief leaves us staring into the listless expanse of a void- one that has us gravitating towards its demonic nothingness. And most potent in destruction than the sudden outburst of grief itself is the unsettling way in which it sets in. The primary reaction of grief is often physical manifestations of wailing and crying, even thumping and stomping. But once that impact begins to buckle, what follows is a miserable sinking of the heart so desolate that can lead one to doom. It is in these darkest phases of grief that the soul refuses to find solace in any worldly being. Basking rather gloriously in the facades of an emptiness that lurks stealthily behind the startling shadows is an alternate world of anguish. Forever ready to plunge headlong into the forlorn corridors of such misery, a grieving soul finds itself drowning further in its engulfing waves that lures like some catharsis, but is in fact a graver conundrum in crisis.
Grief indeed resides in the characteristics of soliloquy. It crushes down on lonely beings with a force that is unreal, delving deep into the inner trances of their psyche, jolted sufficiently by its impact. In ruminating memories and rewinding events back and forth, the intensity of sadness grows by gargantuan degrees, until it assumes such a behemoth identity that is impossible to shake off. In fumbling while trying to find a way out of this fickle funnel, the grieving very often becomes the grieved themselves. In losing themselves to the torment of it, the grieving passes on the grief mechanism to others, reiterating its dominion in a vicious circle, continuing with its soliloquy till the time it dies away or rather, leaves yet another dead in the perished pile.
Source: in a lonely place
However treacherous the cavern of grief may be, the loss attributed to it is never certain. That, despite the fact that at many times this loss can even be physical. But the rigours that grief exerts on the emotional state of the mind is so subtly passive that jerking oneself out of its decaying folds opens up a wound that had somewhat subsided, even when being stubborn in its refusal to heal. The perils of grief aren’t that one cannot cope up with it. Instead, the most terrifying retributions of it happen to be the unexpected nature of its being. Even when we are fully prepared for the grief that we know is sure to befall us, we are always caught off guard by the premises of its preparation. This is because the sense of loss that leads us on to grief is an unfathomable realisation within itself. No matter how many times we might have revisited the same loss, the inner instincts are seldom one of acceptance. It is within such set precincts the human mind works upon that renders us more than sufficiently vulnerable to the galavanizing effects of grief irrespective of how well built our coping mechanism might seem to be.
Source: Margo Shea
The idea however is never to vilify grief because it is what we tend to view as a ‘negative’ emotion. Because when grief becomes an outlet for creativity, it ceases to be destructive even when asserting its forlorn stance in essence. But unexpressed grief can be serious cause for concern, to such extents that overrides its negativity to emerge as purely vile. The same is the case with such sorrows that we tend to shoo away without overcoming. In burying the cases of grief deep down so that it does not interfere with out stability, we lay ourselves all the more bare for grief to trickle down to every confine of our being. We cannot ever chase grief away, because grief is but a part and parcel of all lives. It perhaps is a recess for the soul, forever having to yield in to our attempts at staying happy and gay without the realisation that it is the parts of all emotions that make up the sum of life. Not that we need to beckon sadness into our lives. But accepting also the associated notions of grief and loss as a vital means to humane existence is a luxury we should allow our soul to rest in. In its transient essence, the soul perhaps cannot partake of too prolonged an experience in exhilaration, that anyway also robs us of a balanced sustenance in its most natural state. Grief is but a luxury not everyone can afford- even when it sounds whimsical, having someone or something to grieve over only makes us count our blessings. It in fact might be the parlay of grief that can make us more acknowledging of our lives, in whatever and however we have. The grevity of grief allows us more compassion and enables us of such gratefulness that can serve to enrich our lives, if however only we let it to, even in all its morosity. Giving therefore grief a chance to play along its own rambles in soliloquous identity is perhaps what we all need to learn to afford our lives with.
