> We’re all searching for a piece of home, or a piece of ourselves.
It is just a feeling of alienation.
TLDR: nostalgia hurt when thinking about a dead parent, or a culture we can no longer fully relate to.
It is just a feeling of alienation.
TLDR: nostalgia hurt when thinking about a dead parent, or a culture we can no longer fully relate to.
This deeply oversimplifies the complexities of life, the deepest tragedies, emotional pain. To lose something so beautiful, and to know it is gone, forever. That is grief that lasts a lifetime. It is a burden oneself must make appear to lighten over time, but, some types of sadness go into one's own core, every fiber and every root of one's own being.
A broken spirit, heart, soul. Through a reminder in the present, the slightest twinge of it trickles through, in the form of a memory, a connection leading to every interwoven emotion. It can be a kind of sadness that feels as though it never mends.
This is not the sort of thing to cover up with pleasantries for the benefit of others. The memory of being completely and totally disconnected from a most defining connections in one's own life - that is a type of suffering everyone can experience, and a kind of suffering everyone should have a deep respect for. It's not just nostalgia, because nostalgia comes back in waves, the attempt to bring back what is lost. Sometimes this works. But the death of a loving, shaping parent, or loss of connection to one's essential culture - that is something that, nothing fills that void entirely. There has to be respect for this. Everyone should have respect for this type of loss.
However, the hurt is mediated by attachment to the past. It is not possible to alter the past, but its interpretation is more vulnerable.
I am only trying to share a way: recognizing it is due to attachment. Then it only becomes nostalgia which can only really hurt by the sense of alienation. It becomes "easier" to handle.
I remind of the taste of the cooking by my mother and grandmother - a taste that I am unable to replicate - or even even name the dishes. My mother lamented than I prefer english to her native tongue. It is all true.
I just chose to lessen the hurt by detaching myself from the past.
My grandfather was an artist. Art is always sadness to me. Even my photography. The flavor of sadness, I've experienced a variety of these.
I don't know if this comes through in all of my art, but, that's me. Art, sadness. I suppose I detach from it by making art.
I hope that you will eventually be able to feel your art in a new way- not as sadness, but as the hope it inspires for those who do benefit from it.
Maybe some Metta Bhavana will help you feel and connect to the persons you positively inspire? like me here on hn, or the others who replied to you.
Thank you, I feel the same.
> I hope that you will eventually be able to feel your art in a new way- not as sadness, but as the hope it inspires for those who do benefit from it.
Me too.
> Maybe some Metta Bhavana will help you feel and connect to the persons you positively inspire? like me here on hn, or the others who replied to you.
Thank you, Theravāda is something I've only studied briefly, but it is oriented similarly to my study of Mayahana Buddhism and Zen Buddhism.
I related to many parts of this; losing touch with things or ideas you connected with your person can feel like a new grief yet.
In a larger sense, one’s place and perspective in the world or the universe has been permanently displaced, and one is left trying to make sense of an absurd existence littered with traces of the one you love.
I’m used to the world without him now but I feel the same irrational frustration as the author seeing people the age he would be now and thinking “why did you get to live and he didn’t?” There are so many things I would like for him to have seen, things that he wanted for me that came true.
It’s strange how some of the grief never leaves and pops up unexpected. I got all teary watching Field of Dreams after probably 25 years...a fun movie when I was a kid but as a grown up the tension between fathers and sons.
If you did not see "Big Fish" when it came out in 2003, I highly recommend it as it is one of the best movies that I have seen that explores the relationship between a father and son.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rziFIdDjfHo
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt000319061/
EDIT: On second thought. This movie might be a bit too heavy/close to home for you or others who have lost their father to watch, but the recommendation still stands for others.