All We Have in This World Is Ourselves

I get the feeling that this person is fairly young.

I'm 62, and have been through a fair amount. I lost both my parents, many years ago, and many friends, acquaintances, frenemies, enemies, coworkers, bosses, etc., along the way. In the 1990s, a fair number of folks in my immediate circle died of AIDS. That's a bad way to go. In the last 35 years or so, I have seen numerous folks die of cancer. That's not even mentioning the ones that died from overdoses, suicides, and other violent means.

I travel in eclectic circles.

Once we have some gray in our coiffures, we have generally endured a fair bit of loss.

For some folks, this pain is unbearable, and they deal with it by rejecting intimate relationships, or by becoming hard-boiled and cynical.

I have been greatly helped, along the way, by folks that have fallen by the wayside. Sometimes, by death, other times, just because we grew apart, for one reason or another.

I have also had the signal Honor to help many others. They haven't always been grateful. There's a cynical Mark Twain quote that goes: "If you take a starving dog, and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

Engaging with others, is difficult. It requires self-reflection, compromise, humility, and forgiveness (both of others, and of ourselves).

In my experience, it has been well worth it.

Satisfied customer. Would recommend to others.

WFM. YMMV.

I disagree with the title. If all you have in the world is yourself then you may well not make it over the long term. You could get lucky and have an easy life, but its rarely like that.

I guess I'm older than the author or their bereaved colleague. I lost one parent thirty yeara ago when I was in my mid twenties, and am now losing the other to dementia. I've lost dear friends along the way. You acquire the scar tissue and you wonder why your only life is like this. But its the people in your life that pull you through, wholly or partly, in whatever state you end-up in. The work ultimately means nothing. Be there for your people.

It's such an odd feeling being alone with your grief. Most of the time there are others who feel just as bad, if not worse than how you feel, but they may not be anywhere close to you, so at least you can bond in that way...

Just a tad over a year now, I lost my dearest friend. I work so far away that I could not even attend the funeral. I was demolished, maybe I still am; I just don't talk too much about it. There was nobody around me that would even know him; it was just me.

Soon enough, while drowning in despair, I realized the last time we spent time together was February 2023. I had lost a connecting flight, so I called him around 9 AM. He was out of town, in the countryside with his partner, just enjoying a day out of the city. He couldn't believe I missed the flight, joked for a bit, and gave me instructions on how to get to where he was from the airport, about a 6-hour trip.

I got there, and this place was the closest thing to heaven. I had an amazing weekend (missed the flight early Saturday), and then on Monday we all went back to the city... Because of the nature of the flight, I was going to have to wait until next Saturday to take the flight again. And so we spent that whole week together, just going out for beers and joking around just as we always did... And that was the last week we had together. I know there are a lot of atheists in this community, and that's OK, but in my head, forever, I will always thank God for that week, that so many other people did not have.

> That girl is probably at home, grieving deeply for the loss of her father, while at the same time, people are on WhatsApp or in their units, discussing their 'call schedules.' Isn’t that heartbreaking?

No, its not? People did a great effort of ignoring mortality and then get surprised by the most real thing of everything we know. Death happens and you can use it as a powerful tool to get wiser and realise the life is for the living, your grief and your sadness is only for you. In my eyes you are just losing time doing that instead of being happy and joyful.

You cannot ask the question: "Is life just about going to school, getting your degree, getting a job, then getting married so you can have children who will then continue the process after you are gone?" IF you do not have children. The feeling of having children cannot be conveyed in words, it's something you have to do in order to understand and once you do have children, yes you realise that this is what your life's word has been building up to. The greatest gift we can give is life back into the world. I am grateful that we can do that in the modern world with a minimised risk of dying in childbirth or your child dying as an infant.

That's mostly because people can't "afford" to get involved. They don't have the mental bandwidth or time to handle another person's burdens for longer than a few moments. How many times have you seen a sad post, ad, or article about some starving animals or unfortunate people, felt bad, but scrolled on like nothing happened? We see devastating loss of life and forget about it 5 minutes and a cat video later. That means we can't help or are too preoccupied with other priorities. That's just how the world is—people don't have the luxury of taking on others' sorrows. They have their own baggage to carry.

I actively avoid friendships or getting too close to people or animals because loss is too hard. When you love lots of people and animals you're sad all the time because you're always losing and missing someone.

I'm a bit happier now I'm more alone, but I wish life wasn't like this. Why was I made to love so much if I must eventually lose everyone I love?

I struggle to understand how everyone isn't constantly feeling overwhelmed with grief to be honest.

> Over the next couple of days, we sent condolence messages through our internship WhatsApp group chat or privately to her, or both. But here's the truly sad part—after those two days, it was business as usual.

I lost my father a couple years ago over the span of a day, too. I was on the receiving end of this. The sad reality is that the people I'd have expected the most from didn't even bother with a heartful message. And others revealed themselves as being the most empathetic and kind. It takes that experience to learn to spot the ones who actually deserve your friendship, I guess.

The other sad reality is that aside from the deeply selfish and unkind, we will all go through grief and have to deal with it. Being supportive of others when they do is crucial, but we don't have to feel as much pain as them to achieve that.

> I'm just merely stating an observation that people quickly move on, leaving you alone with your grief.

It might be cultural, but for many it wouldn't be helping to be left dwelling in grief alone by themselves. Pushing them to get to work and get back on their usual routine is not usually a bad thing, it depends on the people and their environment of course (e.g. I'd assuming their work isn't abusive and their coworkers are considerate)

For those who really need it, getting left alone can also be a blessing...I'd think those one will push through to get weeks off and do what they need to get over it, but it's pretty hard to generalize.

I feel I'm uneducated and unprepared to face grief. Grief should be taught and discussed openly

It's incredible how we managed to extend our life expectancy: still, it's not infinite.

There's an author, named Tim Lawrence, who has written some very good stuff about grief.

I won't link, because there's a whole bunch of others, with the same name, and his original blog has gone dead, so I'm not sure where he's at, these days. My wife recently sent me some stuff he wrote, but I don't think it's on the Web, so I don't want to be a copyright abuser.

I think there's been some confusion in people's minds between vocation and profession. Your profession is not the same as your vocation. Profession is the means by which you earn your bread by the sweat of your brow. Vocation is an activity you should develop because you are capable of it, and no one else is capable of doing it under your circumstances.

Of course, by chance, it may happen that in your profession you can fulfill your vocation, but that's merely a coincidence.

Allow me to discern the author's vocation in the situation described. The author showed himself to be the only one able to empathize in the moment of his colleague's suffering. He could have turned his sensitivity into strength and made his colleague's life better by helping her in her time of mourning. I believe that would have given much more meaning to his life than the modus operandi of his work routine. Sensitivity was his vocation, not his routine at the pharmacy.

Every life owes a debt that can only be paid in death, and suffering, pain, and a whole slew of other things go along with that. If you’re lucky, you get a minimal amount of the bad stuff before you pay your dues. Even if we could somehow observe or atone hard enough to equalize every tragedy, we’d effectively freeze time handling the endless torrent of loss, grief, injustice, and so forth. Let go or be dragged.

I think it’s actually a remarkable and wondrous thing that it’s possible to get along with life– even thrive- after tragedy strikes, which if you live long and full enough becomes unavoidable and in fact frequent. Toxic or fucked up relationships aside, the best service you can do for someone you left behind is live a full life with gratitude and without callousness.

All we have in the world is the living; abandoning it for the dead is its own sort of absurdity.

I've thought about this for so many hours over the course of months and likely years. Even as a mere college student, I know when it comes down to it, I can only hold onto myself. I've lost countless friends, acquaintances, and good people to just the way of life, or by being a panicky anxious lonely version of myself. Whenever I start to think someone great will stick around, they leave. I don't pay enough attention to the ones who have stayed, who are always there for me. It goes against my inner desires to be selfish and care more for nyself, but ultimately, it's something I've had to recently come to terms with. I have to make sacrifices for my survival. For me it was a diagnosis, for you it could be loss, rejection, depression, disillusionment, anything powerful enough. I'm very introspective now. I gotta stop or else it'll get as deep as an abyss.

You need to be strong to withstand what life throws at you, nobody is going to do that for you. But that doesn't mean that you have to experience these things alone. It's sad and not normal (outside of the US at least) that a friend & colleague goes through something like that and nobody reaches out and people forget.

The sheer volume of social information we process daily through social media might be straining our emotional machinery beyond the abilities we evolved with [1]. If someone is going through a loss, I try to make their lives a little easier. I feel like our constant growth-based economic society with income inequality issues has poisoned our ability to empathize with coworkers because of competition, and speaking only for myself personally, I would like to rein in these traits of my nature. Be the change you want to see in the world, it doesn't have to be solely about yourself.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26189988/

We cant stop! Modern civilization isnt designed that way. The griever stops but the whole team doesn't. The flipside is we have less death than the middle ages because of the technology we have created. Nonetheless no one is immortal. Death is part of the game, without it life would not be possible. (A universe where life is immortal would not have sufficient antifragility to have the evolutionary pressures to make human experience)

This disconnectedness is a consequence of how the modern world is structured. In the world we evolved for things would happen very differently. In a tribal society most of the people you engage with every day probably know your father and can share your grief.

I think this pattern happens in many parts of our life. We compartmentalize to the point where we know most of the people we interact with to a very small degree.

You are lucky because you really like something and know that you like it. So just enjoy it and have time for yourself and your family. I hope I know what I really like to spend my time for it without regretting like you.

Sometimes you may feel sad, but don't cry because you're lonely. We need that loneliness to grow up.

This person has the privilege to espouse nihilist doomer philosophy like this.

The best part of the world is actually each other.

… all too often, we don’t even have that.

>Isn’t that heartbreaking?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_with_the_Fall_of_Ica...

The world is full of heart break. Every second two people die somewhere. You can either stop functioning and join them or accept the world for being flawed and grow up.