Colin,

An intelligent take, and I wholly agree. I might add a bit of perspective here around the grieving process. We as a nation- a Western nation- have never handled grief particularly well. It’s almost an embarrassment, as though we “can’t handle it.” On one hand it’s very patriarchal to avoid the extraordinary power and sacred nature of grieving for great loss. It’s the ultimate acknowledgement of the power of Mother Nature to take what is Hers and Hers alone: life. The feelings you so aptly describe are all too often deemed feminine and therefore weak. That is one reason why revenge fantasy movies like John Wick and others are so popular; we want someone to pay for our agony. That’s one way we push the real work of grieving onto some Boogeyman who made us feel bad. Look, we have the burden of sadness, and we bear it, nobody else can. What you’re describing is the inability of many of us, if not most, to deal with grief and loss, and the desire of vast numbers of people to shove it away as though first, it’s in the way of our sacred right to happiness at all cost, and someone else should pay for the crime of forcing us to look at horrors that hurt.

The grieving process reminds us that we ultimately have no say in the matter. For we don’t. Ignoring it and shoving it into the shadows is our National pastime these days, for we don’t possess the emotional maturity to handle the horrors that we perpetrate on each other. If we were to embrace all of it, from what we do to animals to the earth to the seas and rivers and air, to the wars we fund to rip nations apart, we wouldn’t survive. It’s tough looking in the mirror. It’s easier to deny the reality of our brutality.