The Necessity Of Grief
Grief is a series of paths no longer available. And if we're paying attention underneath it are some secondary – and exquisite – emotional gifts.
What's That About?
By Les Mottosky
Change is hard. Big change is painful. Disruptive change causes a sense of loss.
This is true for life and our careers.
Humanity is in a real moment right now. With the political turmoil and wobbling economy, many are struggling. Some are suffering.
Suffering is the story we tell ourselves about a change we're experiencing.
To minimize any unnecessary impact this can create, we must start in the mind. Aerospace scientist and former Indian Prime Minister, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam succinctly summarized a message many wisdom teachers had previously observed: "Your biggest enemy is your uncontrolled mind."
This is true in every situation we find ourselves.
A clear mind creates right action. Not necessarily the right action, but the move that best represents a result we've decided we can live with. Intended result or not.
When we've prepared our minds, we can manage – and even limit – the suffering we experience. But pain? That's in a category with death and taxes; it's coming no matter how well we prepare.
Regardless of it's inevitability, pain is an experience some spend their lives trying to avoid. While understandable, it's an ambition that limits the span of our experience and removes a key aspect of being human.
And now with AI, we're on the cusp of being able to eliminate a critical emotion we often mistake for pain.
There's a new app called 2WAI that allows you to capture a few minutes of video and audio of a person and when they pass-on, you can sign-in to the app and through AI, continue to "interact" with the deceased on your phone. Like Face-timing the dead.
While on the surface this seems cool, it's not without significant cost.
The superficiality of this intervention in our humanity seems to leverage a decade long compromise of shallowness conditioned into us with social media. We mistake posts – fragmented, curated representations of experience – for real life. A sliver of content becomes the whole story.
With this "beyond the dead app" you're getting a moving image and an auditory facsimile, but the content of an llm. More than that, the current state of AI chatbots seems to cheer-lead and affirm every perspective we share. The nature of relationships is not always fair and feel-good. Friction, disagreement, awkwardness, criticism and many more challenging reactions are the price of – and growth opportunities for – relations with the undead.
The danger with this app, is it could blunt – and cheapen – the necessity of grief.
Saddest of all, it uses illusion to attempt to replace a person with a product. Novelty can not and will not ever replace the one-of-oneness of an individual and the sanctity of that human life.
The deeper one thinks about this app the more grotesque, arrogant and perverse the concept behind it becomes. The deception is akin to pulling the stuffing from a teddy-bear, sliding it over-top of one of those robo-dogs and calling it a grizzly.
Grieving is a rite of passage for those left behind. An app can't replace that.
Nothing can.
Grief is a sense of loss for something we hold precious. This definition seems pretty tight, but grief has even deeper nuance. A more refined perspective comes from Francis Weller's book The Wild Edge of Sorrow. This is a paraphrase, but an accurate one: 'Grief is the loss of every path – we hoped would come true – that is no longer available to us'.
It's kind of like the flip-side of appreciation or hope, only we're learning to let go of that which is appreciated or hoped for. We wanted more, but it's come to an abrupt end. More opportunities. More time. More memories. We can mistake this dynamic sensation for pain. And it is dynamic; because also rolled into the sting of loss is love, gratitude, nostalgia and sweet memories.
That's why grief is not – and cannot be – pain alone. It's more special than that.
Pain is a learning stimulus we sometimes get from interacting with our environment.
Grief is a series of paths no longer available. And if we're paying attention, underneath it are some secondary – and really necessary – emotional gifts.
So if you're in a moment of adjusting to permanent change – the loss of a special job, an opportunity or someone dear – embrace it, honour it and take your time. All the time you require.
Then you're invited – when and if it feels right for you – to notice the gifts that tag along with the grieving.
When it comes to grief, suffering isn't always inevitable, but beauty is.
Notice it.
TAGS: #What's That About?
Les Mottosky
Adaptation Strategist // I help organizations turn creativity into their competitive advantage by aligning leadership, culture and strategy to unlock adaptive innovations.
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