Grief, the Stoics, The Flaming Lips and Fleabag

Recently I started listening to Daniel Kaufman's discussions with other philosophers, particularly Massimo Pigliucci. Pigliucci is a Stoic. They were talking about the Stoic way of dealing with grief. How I understood it (I'm not a philosopher) was this: the Stoics thought that, as death is outside your control, you shouldn't allow it to destroy your well-being. You have to accept the death of loved ones and recognise the futility of wishing that they hadn't died. This involves seeing your loved ones as "preferred indifferents"; you might strongly like to have them around, but your happiness doesn't depend on them.

Daniel Kaufman's objection to this was fairly natural. If our loved ones die, we are devastated, because we love them. It seems like the only way to avoid being devastated is not to invest emotionally in them, which doesn't seem like a good way to live. Pigliucci explained that it's more about being proportional in our grief - that is, that it is natural to grieve for a certain amount of time, but that eventually we have to get on with life.

Elsewhere Pigliucci says that as a Stoic you should focus on what you can affect, which boils down to your own thoughts and actions. Basically, you should do your best, and take comfort that you did your best, regardless of the outcome.

To me, together with the bit about grief, this sounds a lot like some lyrics from a Flaming Lips song:
Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

 

These went round and round my head in the weeks before and after my dog, Zuni, died. I'd dealt with my dog Pasha's death four and a half years ago by thinking of how much we cherished her when she was alive. I told myself that the time to love her was when she was alive, and now that she was dead, I had to focus on loving Zuni, who could still benefit from that, and Lily (aka Tess), the dog we took from the shelter after Pasha's death.

In a way, this was a good way to deal with it, although I think I pushed memories of Pasha away too much. It was painful to think of her, so I tried not to. I didn't look at photos of her and avoided talking about her. I think I was trying to do what the Stoics recommend, but I don't think I did it quite right.

Grief is, to some extent, proportional to love. We can't avoid grief without suppressing our capacity to love. But we don't only love one person (I include dogs in people). If our grief for one loved one, who is gone, stops us from being happy that we have other loved ones, it's stopping us from loving, to some extent. I think. If we take comfort from the fact that we cherished our departed loved one when they were alive, shouldn't we be cherishing those we still have? Because some day, they too will die. Can you do this, if you are eaten up with grief?

So I think that the imperative to overcome grief comes in part from what we owe our loved ones, rather than just from the pursuit of our own well-being or equanimity. But how do we overcome it?

After Zuni died, I didn't hide his pictures. We have a photo of him on our fridge and every time I see it I get a lump in my throat. But, as with Pasha, I do ease the pain by thinking of him being happy, and how much we loved him and cared for him. This time I am dealing with it by being aware that we can be happy and sad at the same time. I don't feel the need to try to align all my emotions into one. (I've written about that here).

I watched the TV series Fleabag a while ago. In it, there's a wonderful speech about love, and how love feels like hope. I think that's true - love makes you look forward to the day, it makes planning a pleasure. Grief is the opposite of love, I think. It feels like the lack of hope. Every day carries you further away from where you want to be, looking forward hurts.

So I think hope is a kind of antidote to grief. If you can find other things to feel hope about, then the grief is less sharp. The hope can be vicarious. Sometimes it's easier to be happy for other people. The fact that we are social empathic creatures is a great thing. It's like a sort of central treasury of happiness that we can draw on.