Baby, you can sequence my genome anytime you want.
Jonniker wrote about invalidation recently, and I wanted to both direct you to her post and take up the subject myself.
My youngest brother used to cry on his birthday. He didn't want to get older, he didn't want things to change. He had a happy home life, many friends, parents who were nice to him, and siblings who stopped short of giving him permanent psychological and physical disabilities, and yet, at six, and seven, and eight, he was capable of profound grief about his life. It's easy to say, kid, you don't know how good you've got it. It could be so much worse. And of course it could've been. But I've always thought that there's no reason to belittle that grief, because while it may not be as worthy of a documentary or All Things Considered coverage as other things in the world, it was still real. It might even be the most basic kind of grief there is, or at least tied with People Are Cruel to One Another. Things Change.
I remember a conversation with Other one fall evening. We were walking along the cracked, uneven sidewalks of campus, talking about grief and as Jonniker puts it "discomfort," and talking about my sad brother and childhoods that were sad overall. I think the conclusion that we came to was to hold in mind the understanding that suffering isn't a zero-sum game. A person will experience some depths of grief and hardship and has to accept that as what's real, even if it isn't as profound as The Worst Suffering Ever Experienced By Anyone. It may not be that, but it's not nothing.
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Now I have to go, because I was going to respond to all the Borat viral and non-viral marketing by refusing to see it, but it seems I'm going to respond by seeing it on opening night.
My youngest brother used to cry on his birthday. He didn't want to get older, he didn't want things to change. He had a happy home life, many friends, parents who were nice to him, and siblings who stopped short of giving him permanent psychological and physical disabilities, and yet, at six, and seven, and eight, he was capable of profound grief about his life. It's easy to say, kid, you don't know how good you've got it. It could be so much worse. And of course it could've been. But I've always thought that there's no reason to belittle that grief, because while it may not be as worthy of a documentary or All Things Considered coverage as other things in the world, it was still real. It might even be the most basic kind of grief there is, or at least tied with People Are Cruel to One Another. Things Change.
I remember a conversation with Other one fall evening. We were walking along the cracked, uneven sidewalks of campus, talking about grief and as Jonniker puts it "discomfort," and talking about my sad brother and childhoods that were sad overall. I think the conclusion that we came to was to hold in mind the understanding that suffering isn't a zero-sum game. A person will experience some depths of grief and hardship and has to accept that as what's real, even if it isn't as profound as The Worst Suffering Ever Experienced By Anyone. It may not be that, but it's not nothing.
--------------
Now I have to go, because I was going to respond to all the Borat viral and non-viral marketing by refusing to see it, but it seems I'm going to respond by seeing it on opening night.
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