On Seneca...

I think that Seneca raises some interesting points, however I don’t totally agree with them. I think that the one that makes sense is grief becomes unreasonable when the point of crying is self serving, wanting people to pay attention to you because you’re sad. I have definitely experienced people in my own family do that and I was mad because they weren’t honoring the person lost, they were just shifting the spotlight to be on them. I saw it as kind of manipulative and sad. I think, however, Seneca is entirely wrong when he says that the way to fix the issue of overwhelming grief is to just avoid deeper friendships. Humans are relational beings, I feel like that lifestyle would cause me a lot of anxiety and hardship, I would want to feel close to my friends. To only have superficial relationships that you view through a lens of “you’ll die one day” sounds horrible, at least to me. I would like to clarify, though, that that doesn’t mean your relationships should be codependent, which can be a trend for some people our age, it’s not uncommon. Boundaries are simply a good thing to have, I suppose.