As Kathryn Schulz remarks in her conversation with Ezra Klein (“Our Lives Are an Endless Series of ‘And’”), “Grief is an amazing lens. Its capacity for sharp focus is incredible.” We often see this in poetry and art, where a loss brings clarity and seeing things as they actually are, rather than what we hope them to be.
Nick Cave, of The Red Hand Files newsletter and the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, posits “that when faced with intense grief or suffering, the mystical side of our nature can be revived and even flourish, broadening our experience of the world.”
Why doesn’t happiness or feelings of contentment elicit a similar response to that of grief? Is it because grief—sadness, pain, loss in all its forms—is something each human understands at a core level? After all, we all experience death, and often in multiple events if we live a long life. Happiness may be too subjective.
After watching the interview, I read Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz. It is as great as I hoped it would be.