I want what everybody wants, that's how I know I'm still breathing.
Mark DotyRead
Grief does not seem to me to be a choice. Whether or not you think grief has value, you will lose what matters to you. The world will break your heart. So I think we’d better look at what grief might offer us. It’s like what Rilke says about self-doubt: it is not going to go away, and therefore you need to think about how it might become your ally.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Grief is an inevitable part of life, and we should seek to understand the insights it can provide us.
In this quote, Mark Doty reflects on the nature of grief as an inescapable experience that accompanies loss. He urges us to reassess our perspective on grief, suggesting that rather than resisting it, we should explore the lessons and growth that can arise from it. Just as self-doubt is a constant companion that can be transformed into a source of strength, grief too can reveal deeper understanding and resilience if we allow it to guide us.
Themes
GriefLossUnderstandingResilienceSelf-Doubt
In practice
Example use cases
During a memorial service, to remind attendees that grief can teach us valuable lessons about love.
More from Mark Doty
All quotes →In Judith Barrington's striking collection, Horses and the Human Soul, human emotions come ushered and accompanied by animal companions, especially the horses this speaker loves. Here they are witnesses, companions to the spirit, and as vulnerably mortal as human beings. Socially and politically alert, lamenting and celebrating, Barrington's passionate poems inscribe the broad range of her affections.
Mark DotyRead
The World Will Break Your Heart. Grief might be, in some ways, the long aftermath of love, the internal work of knowing, holding, more fully valuing what we have lost.
Mark DotyRead
We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear.
Mark DotyRead
One ambition of poetry, certainly, is to create a reverberant silence in its wake, one that means more or differently than the silence that preceded the poem.
Mark DotyRead
Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours.
Mark DotyRead
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