"Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve." - Earl Grollman

It’s perhaps 11:00 in the morning in Silicon Valley, where the work shift began hours ago. The weather is mostly sunny with 63% humidity and 0% precipitation, yet sorrowful snowflakes already have drifted unnoticed over the melancholy hill. It's the kind of day when you don’t work at all but enjoy the all-forgiving sunshine sitting on your porch.

Meanwhile, it's 3:00 AM in Japan. Japanese working men returned from the office hours ago, had their rice and miso soup, and played with their kids. They've green-ticked all the points on their invisible to-do lists, performed all the rituals they call life. Now, they are in their deep slumber. Sometimes, I wonder what they see in their nightmares. Being late for the metro, which could surrealistically snowball into a nationwide stock market crash? Did any average Japanese ever arrive late After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombing?

And here I am, nearing midnight, Gazing at an AI-generated picture Of a mermaid with three breasts. What have we done to ourselves? Where does it all lead? Going to bed at a reasonable hour seems pointless. I haven't felt the welcoming arctic coolness of my bed Or the enchanting, calming darkness of a night Filled with fireflies for decades. Checking off to-do lists Or embracing life's absurdities seems futile. Only sterilization makes sense. Proving our humanity in front of a desktop makes sense.

Sometimes, it feels as though I have witnessed this world in its most scandalously naked form, Seeing through its deceitful promises and the tender sunrises that hint at fresh beginnings, Invisibly woven within it, only to find a void of nothingness. I should not have seen that bare-chested reality. Now I can’t be happy. (It’s like when you catch the city drug lord committing a murder and then your life is at stake forever.)

Maybe the thing we call happiness comes from being forgetful… Forgetful of the grief that never truly fades away, but can be forgotten for months or even years. That way, one can be happy, or at least closer to it.

But for people like me, who just love to intellectualise life and rainbow or sunshine, That ‘forgetting’ feels like a sin, An adultery with self.

Even when we don't think of it, in the back of our mind,we are aware that someone, somewhere— five years ago or perhaps a century past— penned it in a poem or etched it into a one-act play. Our sorrow is as profound as Ophelia’s. Our grief is no simpler than the grief of Orpheus. In a way, it never truly leaves us as it should. It remains truly ours. Like a bullet wound on a soldier's body, Like an indelible badge of honour Of an eternal war.

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