The vast majority of us have lived long enough to see the passing of somebody that one knew. Such might have been a grandparent, a parent, a friend, a sibling or a personality. Such tend to be difficult periods in our lives. Individuals grieve over those who pass on.

Yet why do we grieve over those who pass on? It ultimately comes down to understandings, circumstances and interests.

Different individuals deal with similar circumstances in different ways. In the context of a death such individuals are left to digest this fact, to interpret it. This process of interpretation almost invariably sources from one’s beliefs (leaving personal interests aside for the moment). Does an individual believe in the existence of an afterlife? What does that individual believe the purpose of life to be? Does that individual believe that what any person is dealt in life, including death, is akin to the settling of a score? Will the individual ever meet such a person again? And, of course, other questions are fitting also.

Circumstances of passing can also make a profound difference. There is a fundamental difference between the death of an individual who would be deemed to have died young and another individual who would be deemed to have lived to a ripe-old age. The means of death, whether through natural causes, illness, accident, murder or suicide. The peacefulness or otherwise of the death concerned. Distance from the self. These are also factors that make a significant difference in one’s interpretation of such events.

Perhaps most profound could be the interests involved. The more established one’s links with the individual were, the more dependent one was upon the individual, the more investment one would have placed in the individual, the greater one would be affected by such a passing. Likewise, one’s perspective of another individual’s grief, especially one who one has feelings for, increases the tendency to foster feelings of grief indirectly within the self (and this makes up for a significant portion of the grief one witnesses at funerals, the emotions spreading from innately affected persons to unaffected persons in a fashion similar to a pandemic).

A further factor is personal identification. If one can place oneself in the shoes of the person who passed away or a person negatively affected by that individual’s passing, then one would likely be more sensitive to the event. Pity is an example of such - a vehicle of negative empathy.

There are undoubtedly other factors that would help to determine why individuals feel sensitive to the passing of people. Resignation to of denial of the reality is one of them. The significance of the individual to one’s social life is another. In any case it has been the intention to explore the phenomenon of grief.

One could compare the death of a person as being akin to the dropping of a stone through the middle of a spider’s web. The resulting gaping hole with strands long and short could represent the severed connections that an individual might have had in life. Every life ended is also the termination of possibilities. Such are observations rooted in perceptions of reality.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Contemplations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.