Grief — Not for someone of the past, but for my future life
The world seems to be getting bleaker and bleaker. The IPCC 2021 Climate Change Report claims that our planet has crossed the point of no return, and environmental destruction has reached a breaking point. In once-sunny and tropical Singapore, we have had nothing but torrential rain and flooding for the past week. Every single day. Elsewhere in the world we also see horrible forms of suffering — from war, to disease, and everything in between.
Socially and politically, we have never been more fragmented and antagonistic towards one another. Tightening authoritarian grips, the rise of racism and xenophobia, widespread corruption and inequality… These are but a small fraction of a seemingly never-ending list of issues that have been plaguing nations across the globe. Instead of enjoying continuous progress, it seems like we took one step forward, but then went three steps back.
Just this week, too, my college received news that we would be merging with another college to form a whole new programme. (Most Singaporeans will know what merger I'm referring to, but I won’t go into the details here.) That meant the loss of 20 years of rich culture and heritage that my college had painstakingly built up. While the other college arguably got the (way, way) worse end of the stick, we were badly affected too. So this brought about yet another wave of mourning for over 500 students (and not to mention alumni and staff) for a programme that we all hold so dearly to our hearts.
So this month felt like a month of constant grief. It feels strange to use “grief” to refer not to someone but something, but it feels like the perfect fit for what many of us are struggling with today. Grief is defined as an instance of intense sorrow, and for us, this instance seems to be rising in frequency, or for some, it doesn’t even remain as an instance anymore. It is instead morphing into a kind of deep sorrow; a wistful melancholy; a sad song with no end in sight.
This grief is intense. It is not missing not just one person, but an entire lifetime — both a past and present — that could have been so much better than what it is today. The curse of infinite knowledge today, brought about by the Internet and higher education, has made us keenly — or even rudely — aware of what got us into this terrible situation, and how it seems like there’s no way out. As a university student, arguably the most educated and technologically literate demographic, it feels like I see, and feel, these devastating cascading effects the most. The pandemic has stripped away all chance of us enjoying our youth, of travelling the world, of finding a good, secure job of our own choosing. Everyday, we look back on the past 2 years, and come to realise that no matter how much we try, nothing can bring those years back, and nothing can make up for all that precious time wasted.
Of course, some may then argue, “it sounds like a First World Problem”. That things could be so much worse. But something that’s often overlooked is that suffering is relative, and ambitions, needs and wants are highly varied across populations, across space, and across time. If you’re reading this and feeling the same conflicted emotions, I am here to tell you that they are completely valid. It seems we are on a bullet train that’s about to drop off into the deep end, to a point of doom and gloom, and no amount of protesting or petition-writing can enact any sufficient form of change to fix the environment, to fix our economy, to fix anything.
All we can do is sit with these emotions, try to process them as best we can, and then continue pressing on. Speak with your friends and families — do not face it alone. Build that sense of shared consciousness and solidarity. Drive community participation and start organising and mobilising — and bleak and pointless as it may seem, doing something is better than doing nothing at all. At least we get to use our remaining time to do something meaningful, surround ourselves with inspiring peers, and if we do finally reach our point of reckoning, at least we will be able to say we did try. We really did. We did our best, and that’s about all we could have done.
And for me, I just try to enjoy and cherish each day as it comes and goes, with whoever I am privileged enough to get to share it with. I think at the end of the day, that seems to be the only thing left to keep us going. This friendship, this feeling of warmth and belonging, to have loved and be loved, it’s enough for me.
