So, my mother passed away recently. When customers became aware of her death, they would say to me, “Oh, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry for your loss.” To which I would reply, “Thank you.” The condolences went on for a while, and I never gave much thought to the previously-mentioned statement. Then, one Thursday as I was lifting weights, for whatever reason, I happened to remember that the day before a customer named Joe said to me, “I am sorry for your loss.” It was at that moment that I began contemplating this commonly-used condolence, and I found that the condolence really doesn’t make any sense.
The I’m-sorry-for-your-loss condolence consists of two parts: and apology and an acknowledgement of an attachment. Let’s begin with the apology.
I’ve already written a detailed post about what an apology actually is. To summarize, an apology is a statement that an offender is returning to the offended the existential value that he or she took from said offended. The statement assumes (and correctly so) that both the offender and offended subscribe to the ego-based, pecking-order game of cat and mouse in which individuals actually have the ability to take existential value (self-worth) from another person and add it to their own.
Then there is an acknowledgement of an attachment. An attachment is a person, place, object, organization, institution, or concept that a person’s ego uses as a means of establishing who he or she is. It is a tool the ego uses to help establish a person’s identity. For example, one might say, “I am a Kentucky Wildcats football fan.” The University of Kentucky and its football team are, therefore, tools the person’s ego uses to establish and maintain a sense of identity. When the Wildcats win a football game, the person is a happy camper; when they lose, well…not so much. The same is true with people. We use other people to help define who we are. When someone our ego uses as an attachment dies, we feel a sense of “loss” because the ego has to adapt, re-define, and re-establish a sense of self.
This condolence is, therefore, actually saying the following: “I return to you the existential value I stole from you when the person your ego used as an attachment to help establish your sense of identity was taken away from you.”
The ridiculousness of the statement should be self-evident. When we tell people we are sorry for their loss, we are apologizing-returning self-worth-to someone who has lost a human being they used as an attachment. The problem is twofold: (1) We never actually stole any self-worth or existential value from the person who lost their attachment, and (2) the person shouldn’t have been using another human being to define his or herself in the first place.
When examined closely, this condolence really is a silly thing to say.
I'm just a regular guy who likes to write about that which I find interesting. I am keeping my identity undisclosed because I am a small business owner and am well known in the community I serve.
The Professor Twist Files 