on grief.

We have tacit, tactile grief, to the very last of our ranks. We have the kind of grief that wails and throws things and rebels against the unfairness of the world when we are buried in the deepest recesses of our solitude, grief memorialized in t-shirts, music selections, food choices, accessories when we are out among the world.

Love, to us, in a lot of ways simply means taking upon oneself another's grief. We don't argue when someone chooses "Goodbye Blue Skies" on the jukebox at lunch for the 47th time this month, we understand that fashion suspends for the blue sneakers held together with duct tape, worn in memoriam for a slain comrade. We don't push for details or speeded healing when someone's eyes glaze over at the mention of The Princess Bride. We just accept that for us, it is and has always been easier to force our sorrows upon pop culture and by entangling art in its many forms with the distasteful memory of heroin overdoses, shouting parents, sexual assaults, and in villifying the association, we can forgive the world.

The biggest problem that anyone in our generation faces lies in the daily struggle to do just that: to forgive the world.