Modern society shuns true grief, replacing funerals with “celebrations of life.” Yet, we trivialize daily struggles, labeling workplace meetings as “traumatic” or “soul-crushing.”
This inversion of proportion distorts propriety: We serve cake when we should mourn and amplify minor anxieties while paid to participate. We have flipped our responses: We party when we should cry and whine when we are celebrated.
Moreover, this habit of denying tragedy desensitizes us to authentic emotions, leaving us ill-equipped for genuine loss, confused and further traumatized by the repackaging of pain as something to be partied away. We somehow conquer grief with feigned positivity, applying one more burden atop our struggle.
A more in-line perspective (simple, straightforward, direct, unmasked) could restore balance but requires reclaiming space for grief and denying the exaggeration of everyday discomforts.