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Grief Has Taught
Us Nothing

by Patricia Simko
2001©

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It was the poet Emerson who said this after his son died. He was referring to his inability to make sense of his son’s death, even after grieving for a long period of time. I am using the line differently, referring to our seeming inability, on both the personal and societal levels, to change our eternally repetitive behaviors, recreating through ignorance and/or passivity cycles of sorrow, remorse, and repetitive indifference or even cruelty. It is as if, despite our best intentions and caring words, our psychic hands are tied by our own self-referential nature.