Embracing Grief: The Quiet Transformation of the Soul

Life often challenges us to carry moments of sorrow and suffering with a deeper trust. The only danger lies in grief that is displayed for others, as outwardly expressed sorrow can become performative. In contrast, solitary and deeply felt mourning bears invaluable fruit for the soul, nurturing its growth. Happiness can never offer such gifts, for it is a punishment in itself—a false goal. Grief and sorrow that are suppressed, rather than fully experienced and understood, are akin to illnesses that are treated superficially. They subside temporarily, only to resurface more intensely, accumulating within the soul as unfulfilled, rejected, and scattered fragments of life that can eventually destroy a person.

If we could see beyond our current knowledge and free ourselves from our prejudices, we would bear our sorrows with greater trust than the fleeting joys that only skim the surface of our existence. Though heavy and difficult to comprehend, often crashing upon us like a powerful wave, sorrow and grief are precious moments when something new and unfamiliar floods our consciousness and soul. Our everyday thoughts and feelings fall silent, retreating to create space and time for the contemplation of silence and the new.

In truth, every moment of grief and suffering is a form of tension, which we experience as paralysis because we can no longer perceive the trivial and superficial emotions we once clung to. We find ourselves alone with the unfamiliar, which has entered us, and we are stripped—if only for a moment—of everything familiar and trivial. This is a transitional state that cannot last forever.

It is for this reason that grief eventually passes. The newness that grief brings cuts into our hearts, penetrating the innermost chambers but not staying confined there; it spreads throughout our being. Often, we remain unaware of what this newness has brought us through our sorrow. We are ready to believe that nothing has changed and that we will not be transformed. Yet, we are changed, just as a home is transformed by the presence of a guest. We may not fully understand who this guest is, but subtle signs suggest that, long before it arrives, the future has already begun to shape us, preparing to embody itself within us.

This is why it is so important to be alone and alert when we grieve. That seemingly still and uneventful moment, when the future enters our soul, is much closer to life than the noisy and accidental moment when the future appears to burst upon us from the outside. The quieter, more patient, and sincere we are in our grief, the deeper and more securely the newness penetrates us. The more deeply we absorb it, the more it becomes our destiny. And when, one day, this newness emerges from within us and extends toward others, we will feel it as something intimate and familiar.

We must understand this—that what we face is not something foreign, but something that has long belonged to us. In recent times, we have been rethinking many concepts, particularly those of time and movement. It is likely that soon we will completely change our understanding of the future, present, and past. There is mounting evidence that we are moving from the future toward the present, not the other way around. Just as humanity once misunderstood the movement of the sun, many of us today are mistaken about the movement of time. The future is predetermined, yet we traverse an infinite space.