While I was thinking of something to write about, I recalled a period - not so long ago - when I was trying to benefit from online open courses; I thought they could offer bits and pieces of information and ideas that could provide a better understanding on every topic of interest.
Harvardx
offers a wide range of
online courses, and Professors like Gregory Nagy and Kevin MacGrath were
among
those who guided me with really great care and helped me to approach
Greek ethos - contemporary and traditional - from an alternative
direction that I was not aware of! Along the way, I have discovered
aspects of a tradition that I highly appreciate not because I am a Greek
but mostly because of its cultural richness.
One of those aspects is grief. Back in my teenage years, when I first came in contact with people from different countries, having different social and cultural background, I could tell our differences, but I couldn’t distinguish or define them. It was more like a notion… I remember a UK friend asking me “why you Greeks enjoy singing mostly sad songs like Cloudy Sunday? Why the grief? Why the sadness?” ...
… And while I couldn’t answer at that time, twenty years later, I found out why! Lament - and a sad song can be a lament - is a grim reminder of our own mortality. Death is absence of life. A state of non-existence. Nothing. Therefore, it needs to have a “shape” and a “form” in order to be dealt in a sufficient way. So, lament somehow may be treated as the “breathing soul” of death itself!
From this point of view, lament is provocative and challenging in such an extreme and absolute way that shows to each and everyone, whether participating or not, that there are some boundaries that no one can ever bypass.
It is not just an act of grief and it
is not just an act of expressing penthos. It is the way death may receive a
significance among the living ones and so, the deceased who is lamented, to achieve a short
of continuity and a symbolical re-embodiment in memory of the beloved ones that
now are mourning because of the loss they have to compromise with. The same applies to sentiments and emotions.
Lamenting someone is a way to celebrate his/her deeds … his/her life; and no matter how oxymoron that might seem, it indicates a path on how to achieve a continuity that won’t hurt no more. That reminds me the words of Sophocles in Oedipus: “Let every man in mankind’s frailty consider his last day; and let none presume on his good fortune until he finds life, at his death, a memory without pain.”
Eventually, no one can escape from death. Any end is inevitable! And this “universal truth” may be more than enough to help us decide the qualities of our living time...
