Obsession and grief

From Obsessive Thinking, a dhamma talk by Ajahn Thanissaro:

Grief is something conditioned by feeling like we need to be sad in order to show loyalty to that which we’ve lost.

This struck me because it’s easy to get locked into cycles of grief that don’t feel entirely natural. You feel like you have to put on proverbial sackcloth and ashes for appearances, or even worse, because you feel you have to.

It’s important to feel real loss, real sadness. To cry. Life has hardship, losses and tragedy. But life also moves forward and at some point getting lost in grief is manufactured.