The Cost of Joy
It was Alfred Lord Tennyson who said in his short poem In Memoriam to A.H.H. (His Cambridge pal Arthur Henry Hallam) in 1849:
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods.
I envy not the beast that takes
His licence in the field of time,
Unfettered by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes.
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth,
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate’er befall,
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
His finishing couplet has become one of his signature quotes that collectively made him England’s Poet Laureate for forty-two years, most of the reign of his beloved sovereign, Queen Victoria. It is said that she particularly took comfort from this poem after the death of her consort (husband), Albert. I guess that’s when Prince Albert first got put in a can.
The sentiment is very important in life. We are all taken with grief at one time or another in our lives and for one reason or another, and we all react differently to it. Loss is, by definition, more or less the same thing as grief and psychologists define the process of grieving as having either five or seven stages. It was the Swiss-American psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who defined the processing of grief in 1969 and she set it as five stages, so let’s use that and assume the added two are just someone’s attempt to gain an application credit for a minor refinement. The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance and they were first used by her to describe the process of grieving over one’s own impending death. It was only later that it was realized that the process is more or less the same for all versions of grief with the level of pronunciation likely a factor of closeness to the loss and perhaps one’s inherent level of empathy.
Empathy is an unusual human quality or ability. It is said that 98% of human beings are capable be of being empathetic. That means pretty much anyone who is not a psychopath, narcissist, or sociopath (who I guess, by this math, make up about 2% of the population) can be empathetic. Clearly, those who are unable to relate to other peoples feelings or emotions are the exception (and no, as much as I want to veer off and discuss Donald J. Trump at this moment, I am not going to do that). And, in very symmetric fashion, it is said that only 2% or less of all people are true empaths, who literally can and do take on the pain and suffering of the afflicted person in grief. Feeling what someone else feels is very rare just as feeling nothing when someone else is in pain is rare. During our normal lives, we all evolve one way or another in terms of our empathetic level with some gaining and some losing over time. I imagine like all things human, there is likely a combination of nature and nurture involved in that progression and journey that we all take.
I have written lately about my personal loss and grieving for several friends that have passed away or are on the path to passing away. Since then, the list has continued to grow, as it inevitably and unfortunately does, with me hearing about yet another old colleague working through a Stage-Four Pancreatic Cancer diagnosis. He was not a particularly close friend, so once the shock of hearing that news faded, I bypassed the denial and anger stages, but did stop for a bit of bargaining. In this instance, that takes the form of finding out his age and medical history and the circumstances surrounding his illness. I could try to tell you that I was doing some sort of bargaining with the universe on his behalf, but that would be less than truthful. What I was doing was a form of bargaining with my own demons and rationalizing about why he contracted the beast because of his affinity with alcohol, which would never happen to me because I don’t drink. There is no science to this reasoning, just wishful thinking. In sitting down to write about this transgression against righteousness, I feel I am avoiding the depression that would eventually come from my selfish unburdening, and that allows me to get to the finish line of acceptance.
It is hard not to personalize death, and what I mean by that is to take the death of someone we know and cause us to reflect upon our own demise. But believe it or not, that is not the worst kind of personalization when it comes to death. I would argue that any being is allowed the indulgence to be concerned about dying. It is so starkly final (ignoring the salve of “everlasting life” that religion tries so very hard to imbue in us) and blanketed in the unknowable in a way that simply vexes the mind too much to bear. The really self-centered act is the one that I call The Highlander Syndrome. You may recall the Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery 1986 cult classic movie that spawned that thinking. Queen wrote the eerie theme song Who Wants to Live Forever that haunts my brain to this day. It revealed the pain that comes from outliving those who you love, a pain that far outstrips the pain of death
Yesterday, our friends Mike and Melisa told me that they had to put down their beloved German Sheppard, Bravo. Bravo was a sweet dog that, since I’ve known him, struggled with a growing loss of his muscle functionality to the point of not being able to walk or even mildly enjoy the simple pleasures of life. It was Bravo’s time and bravo to Mike and Melisa for helping their dear friend to spend a last moment in the sun before life simply became too hard to bear. Bravo has moved on, but now Mike and Melisa must go forward, sadly, but stoically. Kim and I had to do the same when Kim’s Cecil went on before us. We will face the same with Betty at some point soon enough, and it always difficult to be left behind to ponder life without someone we love. And yet, most often we reenlist ourselves to the task by finding a new pet to love.
I don’t know if Alfred Lord Tennyson had a dog, but I’m sure he would agree that the joy that comes from loving a person or a pet far outweighs the cost of the inevitable loss. Simply and beautifully put by the Poet Laureate, ‘tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.