My Tragedy is Better than Your Tragedy

Grief Shaming: Because there is no sport in compassion

Grief and tragedy were never meant to be digested like professional sports. We don’t have tragedy brackets on ESPN where Unarmed Black Man Shot was beat out by Murdered Cop. We don’t have sports commentators debating the underdog value of advancing Military Hero Dies In Combat to the Final Four Bracket because of its dark horse value and grassroots support. We don’t do these things because it would be sick. Right?

We live in a world forever remaining a mixed cocktail of joy and sadness, beauty and tragedy. At the point of consumption this cocktail seems to always result in madness; a madness only life could bring on. I think one thing we forget is we are all script-less vagabonds, amateur actors, wandering the grand theater of life. We are all in a fight. We all want IT to make sense and we sometimes forget the fight is not with each other. Rather than accepting the madness, in the case of compassion, we try to stack rank causes. We try to bring order and we think we can do it with competitive caring.

Caring about the right thing at the right time in the right way has become some kind of sick social currency. Is it Black Lives Matter or is it All Lives Matter?… or are a lot of us just trying to miss the points? This sick social…