Is grief an infallible means to control and manipulate others?

Have you ever been shocked by the behavior that some folks display during funerals?  All those inconsolable men and women who seem totally unable to handle the passing of a loved one; a loved one they would take for granted and treat with much disrespect when he or she was still alive!  How about people who solemnly swear by the past and how glorious it was, even though at the time they spent their entire energy complaining about everything and everyone?  How often do people choose to continually grieve what they do not have anymore and that they used to take for granted?  When he or she is gone, or when it is gone, they suddenly and almost magically decide that they cannot live without him, her, or it.  Why is that?  What agenda does this serve?  Do they crave compassion and/or attention?  Do they want the entire world to feel sorry for them?  Do they need a story to share, so they can relate to others?  But foremost, who are the true victims of their massive emotional fraud?

::: Should you be cautious of all those “professional” grievers?

Should you be extremely cautious of people who have this tendency to grieve everything and everyone they have lost?  What if there were series of hidden agendas behind the griever’s intention to show the world that he or she is still grieving?  First of all, isn’t it a necessity or a norm to grieve?  When you lose someone, you need to hurt and mourn.  Society would condemn and judge any other display of behavior.  Grief is an obligation.  And it also represents a wonderful way to manipulate and control others.  The next time you attend a funeral, carefully observe what is happening around you.  Look at the reactions of those who are directly affected by the loss, and listen.  It truly is a fascinating spectacle.  It is never about the deceased.  Instead, it is all about the one who is staying “behind.”  And you better be there for him or for her, regardless of how long it will take.  To consciously prolong the grieving process is a powerful tool that is utilized to manipulate those who genuinely care and want to help.

Per this society, it is easy to grieve.  It is actually much easier to grieve than it is to take charge and make life changes that are utterly required.  It may indeed look easier in the very short run.  However what are the ramifications in the longer run?  They are absolutely dreadful.  There is not a single person who has the capacity to be the solution to your own problems and to your own life.  You are the only solution to your life.  But for many, this is a reality that is way too complicated or even unfair to accept.  Therefore, they embrace distractions and artifacts that give them the sensation to exist.  In the process, they occult one crucial element, which is the need to be accountable for all their choices.  The fear of having to experience difficulties and discomfort is such that they would rather choose to regress and cultivate mediocrity.  Their distraction of predilection is grief.  They grieve what they refuse to have, while judging in the meantime those who dare to have a life.  Grief conceals the implacable truth about the choice that people make when they discard what is absolutely needed to generate expansion.

The instigators of the grief often times realize that it creates a sentiment of compassion and sympathy around them.  So why should they stop, since such behavior triggers a level of interest that they would certainly never receive otherwise?  Without their grief, no one would even notice them.  So why not using it every single time it becomes handy?  Karin and her dad endured her mother’s tantrums for years.  She would relentlessly scream at her husband and constantly remind him that he was good for nothing.  She would also criticize and diminish her daughter.  Karin’s mother is not nuts.  She is simply a toxic individual.  Two years ago, the dad died, leaving the mother in a dire financial situation.  At that time, Karin, a successful corporate professional, started to realize that she did not have to take her mother’s abuse any longer.  So she stopped talking to her, which pushed the mother to frequently leave nasty messages on her answering machine.  In need of money to pay her bills, the mother would call every month toward the end of the month, crying and complaining about how much she was missing her late husband and how lonely she felt.  Emotionally cornered, Karin would send a check, and then the abuse would resume.  Beware of those men and women who do not hesitate to use others’ emotions to serve some sort of twisted legitimacy that grant them the right to be mean, nasty and destructive.  Now, if they are able to do it, it also infers that others are willing to be used and abused.

::: Why can the sentiment of loss feel so excruciating?

When you are truly grateful for all the times you have spent with someone, can you really experience an overwhelmingly strong sentiment of loss, once this person is not here anymore?  When you are genuinely grateful for what someone did for you at some point in time in your life, why would you suddenly chastise this person if he or she were to leave?  When you are grateful for someone else, can you also be grateful for the fact that this person is choosing to move on, even if that does not include you?  Or should gratitude carry the condition of systematic physical and/or emotional presence?  There cannot be any condition imposed on gratitude, since it would negate what gratitude means: to be appreciative of benefits received.  Unfortunately, not that many people are appreciative.  They continually take, and once the dynamic is broken they are angry and they retaliate.  What they ultimately construct is an abyssal void in their lives, from which it is highly difficult to emerge.

There are so many men and women who constantly create successions of situations to avert the apparition of voids in their lives.  These individuals are totally unable to function on their own.  Therefore they require the presence of another person or group of persons, so they can convince themselves that they are somewhat functional.  But isn’t it nothing more than just a pretense of functionality?  Ultimately, what happens to folks who crave someone else’s presence, because it represents the only way they know of to feel alive inside this society?  Don’t they need to alienate what they are, so all powers can be transferred to those who are needed to supposedly function?  As soon as you decide that you need someone else or something to bring some kind of meaning to your life, you cease to exist yourself.  You create a strong sense of dependency that diverts you from what is urgently required and that has the potential to improve your life like never before.  All hopes lie in this other person who may not even be aware of this dysfunctional role that he or she was given.  As soon as this other person leaves, the weak link cannot face the mediocrity of his or her reality, the pretense cannot hold any longer, and his or her life starts crashing down often times with a point of no-return.

Where the sentiment or the apprehension of loss exists, there cannot be any room for personal expansion.  Wherever there is a tiny bit of regret in your life, personal emancipation is impossible.  All enterprises that aim toward the creation of a better life stop almost instantly.  Anyone who needs someone else to feel complete cannot experience any other alternatives than the one that consists in being totally absent from his or her life.  It is ineluctable.  Interestingly enough, this someone else’s presence does not automatically mean that it is honored.  Isn’t that strange?  How can someone who is so vividly sought out be dishonored in any way shape or form?  Event though this does not make any sense, it describes a reality that is overwhelmingly common.  This one crucial piece of the puzzle is suddenly taken for granted.  Almost over night the savior becomes the loser, who is repeatedly used and abused, ignored and dismissed.  As soon as this savior turned loser disappears, the instigator of the change uses grief to sweep away all the reminiscences of his or her insane choices and behaviors.

–

The safest alternative is to remain aware at all times of who gravitates around you.  This world is full of users and abusers who have only one goal in life: they need to control and manipulate you, so they can destroy you.  Professional grievers fit inside this category of individuals.  They must interfere with your life, because their mission is to utilize their personal failures in an attempt to make you feel guilty for everything that you have accomplished.  Are you ready to live your life without giving them the benefit of the doubt and without second guessing everything by which you stand?  It is a learning process.