Some people like to imagine life as a story, and death as a neat end to that story, tying up all the loose ends. They suppose that everything that happens is meant to be, with people existing as mere characters with storylines ordained by some kind of cosmic director.
Real life is rarely so clear as that.
The Cantonese describe an emotion more common among the dying with their phrase sǐ bù míng mù (死不冥目). It refers to the feeling of approaching death with the knowledge that a grievance will never be resolved.
Many people have an intolerance for negativity, attempting through cajoling, coercion, and even outright force to wrest people into a positive frame. Look on the bright side of the situation, we’re told. There’s always a silver lining, they say. Don’t worry, things will get better.
Only the most fortunate can deny, however, that sometimes, things don’t get better. Sometimes, there really isn’t a bright side, because some dark clouds have no glowing margins, and grow ever darker until the moment that they release their lightning, with death and wreckage to follow. Some people achieve moments where justice seems to be achieved, but most of the injustices of life never go away. We learn to live with them, and eventually, to die with them still casting their shadows. Time does not heal all wounds. It causes some wounds to fester and spread.
Sǐ bù míng mù may be a Cantonese phrase, but it’s an emotional concept many outside the borders of China can understand. In European medieval culture, there was belief in the existence of revenants. These beings were the dead, returned in some physical or spiritual form to the world of the living because of the emotional power of the unresolved grievances that they died with.
A high degree of emotional granularity provides people with some resilience, enabling them to recognize the specific nature of their feelings as they experience them. Becoming acquainted with a more detailed emotional world isn’t a panacea, though. Knowing your feelings doesn’t prevent bad things from happening, and sometimes, as is the case with sǐ bù míng mù, the most we can get from a particular grain of new emotional understanding is a more focused view of the path through suffering on the way to complete destruction.
