We live in a culture plagued with platitudes, utterly paralyzed by passivity. It’s an environment in which an original thought is rare and a genuinely honest statement is rarer still.
It’s a cold, barren existence. A debilitating societal ailment.
But it isn’t terminal.
There is a cure.
However, before we start discussing healing, we must first understand the sickness.
The source of disease, what the CDC would call “patient zero,” is a weak social and spiritual infrastructure. We don’t make room for grief in our cultural expectations; there is simply no time, or space, for bereavement.
In many cases, mourning periods are limited to a series of social media posts meant to honor the deceased. If we’re lucky, we get a few hundred “sad” reactions (the little emoji you click on Facebook that cries digital tears), and maybe a couple dozen expressions of sympathy in the comments.
But then, almost instantaneously, life goes on. Back to work. Back to class. Back to business as usual.
The digital tears dry up.
Meanwhile, in a locked bedroom somewhere, the real tears keep falling.
And the process repeats. Day after day. Night after night. And though the broken heart never truly heals, it callouses just enough to keep going, just enough to press on into the perfunctory wasteland of silent routine, ever-maintaining just enough momentum to satisfy cultural expectations.
To be clear, this process is pathological. And as with any pathology, in the absence of adequate treatment, we must expect deleterious and progressive effects.
In my estimation, the effects are simple and devastating:
- We cannot properly support broken hearts in our culture
- Resultantly, broken hearts never heal
- Recycle effects 1 and 2 into perpetuity
If we maintain the metaphor that our weak social and spiritual infrastructure, especially as it relates to grief, is a disease, then we must admit that our current treatment of choice is a pathetically impotent cocktail of platitude, cliche, and passive silence.
This is tantamount with applying Neosporin to a leprosy lesion.
To borrow from Kentucky vernacular – ‘it just ain’t gonna work.’
The real cure for cliche, for our diseased and broken system, is something called candor.
Candor is a fancy word for honesty. To be candid is to express your true feelings or emotions on a topic in a raw, unfiltered manner; it means you’re telling it like it is, in the purest, most sincere way possible, without regard for social expectation.
When we encounter tragedy, we use cliches and platitudes because we don’t know what else to say; we use them to fill the void and fend off awkward silence.
If there’s one thing our culture hates, it’s silence.
But please understand, there are two kinds of silence – passive and active.
Passive silence arises from fear, awkwardness, and timidity. Active silence arises from reverence, humility, and self-awareness.
When comforting a grieving loved one, active silence is far superior to cliche. It’s something called the Ministry of Presence, and in many cases can be the most powerful form of support a hurting heart will ever receive.
So, when used appropriately, don’t underestimate the empathetic power of silence.
However, when you do speak, do so with great candor.
Be honest. Be real. Be raw.
If you don’t understand, say you don’t understand. If you don’t know what to say, say you don’t know what to say, then practice active silence.
And grievers, this applies to us too. As we discussed in last week’s post (see Espionage of the Heart), if we ever want to heal and regain some semblance of normality in life, we must abandon our childish secret-keeping and be honest with our loved ones. We too must be candid, unfiltered with the contents of our agony.
If we commit to candor, we can cure the plague of platitude and unshackle ourselves from the paralysis of passivity. And along the way, we just might make the world a better place.
No more digital tears. Let’s get real.
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