On Friday I hosted my second annual Feast of Seven Fishes, with a small group of friends here at home. Not all are up to the task of eating seven fish in one sitting, but it was a good willing crowd. Anchovy, salmon, shrimp, mussels, cod loin, clams, branzino.
It was a good way to start to wind down a year of such deep water dreaming. Of grieving and painting and praying. Of thinking daily about Bishop Ambrose’s words that “this world is the sea…and you must be this fish, that the waves of the world do not swallow you.1” I love fish more than ever.
Those skilled in mourning often reassure less seasoned grievers by saying sea legs in the depths promise heights. Said simply, with sorrow comes joy. I believe it, I do. But I want better language. So I’ve been reading philosophy of emotion, which is a field where people say old and true things in new ways that excite me.
I’ve been reading the work of a researcher named Line Ryberg Ingerslev, who looks at grief, responsiveness, and other things I’ve long had an interest in. In her recent article titled “What the experience of transience tells us about the afterlife,” Ingerslev considers what happens when we “revolt against mourning” and the relationship between willingness to mourn and world-building.
People respond to the transient nature of reality in all kinds of ways. Some are despondent knowing nothing good stays, while others refuse to accept it. And while I’m sure there are many who respond well to loss, I bet defending against it’s most common.
Aware that we’ll lose who and what we love in the end many refuse mourning by refusing to love. And maybe this is what people mean when they say our capacity for joy’s related to our capacity for sorrow. Fear of intimacy involves fear of mourning.
Ingerslev calls the tendency to rebel against transience a “revolt against mourning” and cites philosopher and psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear who names this revolt “a spoiling activity” and an “attack” on the ability to experience pleasure in the present.
In his book Passionate Marriage, sex therapist David Schnarch2 notes this paradox: The more we come to rely on an other, the harder it may be to share true wants and needs. As our reliance on the other increases, so too do the consequences of loss if it turns out our needs can’t be met.
The connection between fear of intimacy and fear of mourning feels clear, here. I’m more likely to hide when overwhelmed by fears of losing someone I love; aspects of myself from them, aspects of them from myself, even aspects of myself from myself. Hiding, avoiding intimacy and interdependence, never getting close enough to see that others are as real as we are3 or letting them see that we too are real, could also be seen as refusals to mourn.