The Grief of a Young Adult

The age of young adulthood - the very phrase sends a mixture of emotions through me; rejoice at the offered freedom, fear of the unpredictability, sorrow about the what if(s) and what could have been(s) and a lot of regret on what I should have. In a country like India, I believe that young adulthood is to be held to more significance than teenage. It is in this period that people gain independence from their parents, family and the society in terms of opinions, decisions and responsibilities. Consequently, this period also holds a great deal of emotional turmoil. I write this article today, at the age of 22, nearing the end of my young-adulthood, hoping that it would yield me a voice and help overcome the silence I have maintained all throughout this period.

After a great deal of thought, I decided to title this article using the word Grief. The course of the article would explain why it is fitting and apt. And so, I begin by describing my first encounter with the concept and emotion of grief, in an hour of English class six years ago.

In my twelfth standard English literature, we read the poem O Captain! My Captain!, written by Walt Whitman. The poet expresses his emotions on the death of the US President Abraham Lincoln. The three stanza poem has a distinct structure that is and will be imprinted on me forever, the credit of which goes to my English teacher. I have added below the first stanza of the poem, in the hope that what I aim to convey is better understood.

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done; 

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart! 

O the bleeding drops of red 

Where on the deck my Captain lies, 

Fallen cold and dead.

The stanza has 8 lines - the first four expressing the victory and happiness ensured by the efforts of Lincoln and the last four expressing the grief the poet felt on his death. Our teacher ensured that we observed something more to the poem apart from the tone - in each stanza, the first four lines were wordy while the last four were short. “Grief is silent. One becomes so numb that words fail to express what he feels”, said my teacher, reiterating the words of Seneca, “Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.”

She explained this further with an example familiar to Indians, a Bollywood film Lagaan. This 224 minutes long movie set in the 1890s portrays a village in India that tried to exempt themselves from the harsh British taxes in an unconventional manner - a cricket match, set with both parties agreeing to the terms. When the days of the match finally arrived, it was the British that batted first, scoring a daunting 322. The Indians on batting retired that day to a night of uncertainty after losing a series of quick wickets. This was a moment of fear, despair and grief for them, with their entire livelihood at stake. The director at this moment, chose to bring in a song - the evergreen O Palan Hare! Gaining motivation, the next day Indians bat and emerge victorious to be exempted from taxes for the rest of the British rule. This movie advanced to become an Indian film nominated for the 74th Academy Awards under the category, Best International Feature Film. Unfortunately, it didn’t win and we might never know why. But my English ma’am theorised, that crucial night, being a night of grief, could not have led to a melodious song emphasising again - “Grief is silent”. For my seventeen year old self, this concept got set in stone.

Right after this came the freedom of young adulthood, a period where I had the opportunities to look at the society independently, without the opinions of others enforced on me. Over time I realised that I began looking at the society through a filter of my own - where kind acts are rewarded with pain, where love and lust are interchanged, promises are as frail as glass and vulnerabilities are exploited just as well as the resources we inherited from the Earth. My view of the society seems to be harsh, even in my own eyes. Surely, there are acts of kindness? There were times in my own life where I cherished the love my family held for me and vice versa. But when I look at the society in general, I see a trend. The acts of kindness, love and magic are those that happen within a personal circle - a circle of family and friends (with exceptions in these as well!) while criticism, judgmentalism, anger, hatred and selfishness are glaring right at the face. If you tend to disagree, I would ask you to look at the comments section of any social media site and then tell me if my perspective is wrong.

At this juncture, I would like to bring in the thoughts of two authors. One, Yuval Noah Harari in his famous book of Sapiens. Harari strongly emphasises and believes that the reason for the success of humans, the reason why we control the resources of Nature lies in our collectivity. Unlike any other animals, humans have this brilliant social network, where they collectively work and achieve goals. If this network is our one greatest strength, how and why is that this is also a source of grief? The answer lies in the next paragraph quoted from Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig.

“THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.”

If I were to summarise the above two paragraphs in a couple of lines, I would say “Yes, our strength lies in our ability to cooperate with strangers, but is the structuring of this cooperation good? I find it to be such that it is revelling in the needs and insecurities of people for the betterment of the society as an organism.” We pride ourselves on having overcome the “Law of Jungle” but is the “Law of Society” any better? In addition, some of the laws of this society goes against the very biological nature of us animals.

Now imagine an 18 year old, put in this society, given all but the experience of an adult. Every incident is an opportunity to figure out who you are and understand how you feel. You need to make decisions that rip you away from the safety of your childhood and drag you into the wilderness of adulthood. There’s an overwhelming influx of such incidents - deciding a career path, embracing the euphoria of first love, coping with the loss of friendship and love, facing peer pressure and so on.

The harsher truth about these incidents is there’s always a need to find a balance between what one truly feels and believes and what is acceptable to the society. Criticism and judgement is easier in the current age of social media, making anxiety and grief the norm. Expression of this in most cases enables greater backlash of criticism and judgement. So what’s left but the silent suffering of millions? This truth, staggering even for an adult, can shatter young adults. I think this is the reason why every author, from Shakespeare to Salinger, writes about young people. They simply can’t avoid the truth, being young is so painful, it’s almost too much to feel.

This is when I think of my English lesson, it is so much easier for people to talk about the smaller issues - fear of a test the next day, anxiety over weight gain and hair loss. But when it comes to issues such as insecurity, social anxiety, grief over loss of loved ones; expression can be much difficult. I see teens and young adults commit suicides and crimes, and I cannot help but wonder, which silent grief is plaguing them? What must they be going through to think they had no other way out? And most importantly, can we do anything to change this scenario?

I am not naive enough to believe in the design of a perfect societal structure. I know that ideality exists in naught but the Platonic Mathematical World. But I wonder if the race to become the greatest economy has compromised on our basic biological and psychological needs. Should we just take hints from Bhutan and grade ourselves based on the Gross National Happiness? I don’t think I am capable enough to think about the long term positive and negative impacts of such a structure. But I hope that someone who can, truly needs to think about this. Because the simple truth is these days, when I go to a peaceful place like a grassy lawn under the big blanket of the sky scattered with stars, I close my eyes to cherish the silence and embrace the contentment. The silence pierces my ears, as loud as the screams of pain - a silence filled by the quiet suffering of grief everywhere.