Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.
Interpretation
Grief can profoundly alter our understanding of the world and challenge our beliefs about order and meaning.
In this quote, Julian Barnes reflects on the disorienting effects of grief. He suggests that when we experience profound loss, it can feel as though our previous understanding of life, with its patterns and meaning, is shattered. This disruption can lead us to question whether any order or coherence exists in our reality, revealing how deeply grief can affect our mental and emotional frameworks.
In practice
In a eulogy, one might say, 'As Julian Barnes noted, grief can shatter our sense of patterns in life, reminding us of the fragility of our experiences.'
(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
Is despair wrong? Isn’t it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses endurate. Both go mouldy.
It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.
But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.
And that's a life, isn't it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It's been interesting to me, though I wouldn't complain or be amazed if others found it less so. Maybe, in a way, Adrian knew what he was doing. Not that I would have missed my own life for anything, you understand. [pp.60-61]
Every love story is a potential grief story.
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.
The last change in our point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air.
We live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.
Health care is a design problem. Dependence on foreign oil is a design problem. To some extent, poverty is a design problem. We need design thinkers to solve those problems, and most people who are in positions of political power are not design thinkers, to put it mildly.
In order to acquire anything in the physical universe, you have to relinquish your attachment to it. This doesn't mean you give up your intention to create your desire...and you don't give up the desire. You give up your attachment to the result.
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