fandomhigh | Practical Philosophy, Wednesday

"This is not a particularly kind week in history," Ender said. "It is far from being the worst - but it's terrible enough that, even though most of us are not from this time and place, I feel it might be worth reflecting on the way we process loss."

He took a swig of water from his bottle, then shifted until he was sitting comfortably.

"Every culture treats loss differently," he said. "Even within those cultures, there are spaces - families, schools, groups - that have differing idea about the mourning process, about how much time to pour into it, about how to do it. In fact, we are even cultures in and of ourselves in this; some of us might cry, some of us might channel that energy into other things, some of us may try to show nothing at all."

Guess which one of those categories Ender fell into.

"How do you handle loss? Do you mourn your dead? How? How does your culture handle it, and how much did you learn from it? Twenty-first century Earth has its funerals, its ceremonies, its rage and its vocal sorrow. As for my time - when I grew up, we were largely blunted by loss, numbed by fear. Our sorrow was humancentric, downright xenophobic... and it lasted for many decades."

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"Then..." Evan shrugged his shoulders, a bit at a loss. "I guess I'm not doing it wrong. But some insight on how other people mourn might help, anyway."

"I'm not sure how well my own experiences translate," Ender said. "I grew up in an environment where displays of emotion weren't tolerated. You poured whatever grief you had deep inside yourself and carried it with you."

Though these days, in some company, it was easy for him to burst into tears at the drop of a hat - sometimes.

"That seems... toxic," Evan noted, after a moment of silent thought. "If it's always with you, piling up with everything else, doesn't it just fester there? How do you move on without letting it poison you from the inside?"

You eventually explode and kill an entire alien race simply to make it stop.

"You try to dig through the good memories," Ender said. "Find something you can keep with you. Remind yourself that that memory matters, that you won't lose it."

Evan fell silent again, thinking back on what memories he had, on the few he could actually trust.

Even he had a couple of those.

"I'm afraid," he admitted, "that the bad memories might sour the good. If there's one beautiful thing and a thousand nightmares, how do you keep that one thing safe?"

"You have to convince yourself the rest of it doesn't matter," Ender said quietly. "There will always be pain. There will always be the stuff of nightmares - of bad memories. But you had this one good thing, this once. Just this one moment in time, and that's something that nothing can take away. You understand? It'll be there no matter what. Whether you let it get buried or not."

"But if it gets buried too deeply, maybe I won't be able to find it when I need it the most."

Evan shrugged his shoulders, looking down at the ground.

"I lose sight of the good things too easily. Life doesn't really do bad things in half-measures."

"I didn't say it was easy," Ender said. "Or that it always works. It didn't always work for me. But... you need to work for it to make it stick - recognize that some memories are sacred. That's all I can say, from my own meager experience."

"Maybe I'll give it a try, anyway," Evan murmured. "Keeping my focus on that one good thing, at least. I don't know if I have it in me to hold on to the hurt, but the good thing... that seems like a good starting point."

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