Rebuilding After Tragedy
Tragedies are inevitable in life. Some tragedies cripple you, literally and mentally. Some break you so badly that there is no will left to continue. They disrupt the rhythm of life so completely that, no matter what you do, finding that rhythm again becomes the only thing that matters, yet it feels impossible. Your values, your will, your idea of life, your understanding of the world—everything shatters to a point where you are left with absolutely nothing.
Being aware of this inner destruction is the first step towards standing up. Tragedies can broadly be divided into two categories: those that were within your control and those that weren’t. If it is your own creation, you have to forgive yourself first, accept and identify the flaw, and seek forgiveness from others wherever possible. You need as much strength as possible for the next leg of the journey.
Owning up to your mistake reduces the guilt. You no longer have to carry the cognitive burden of constantly coming up with defences to protect your identity. Treat it as the demolition of an old building so that a new one can be built. For a brief period, everything has to be destroyed utterly and completely. Accept your mistake and work on a plan to recover.
For tragedies where things were not in your control, you need to develop an awareness that life is random and that it was simply your turn to face a tragedy. You couldn’t do anything. Whatever happened was bad, but this is the card you have been dealt. You have the right to grieve over your tragedy. You have the right to seek help whenever and wherever possible. But in the end, you have to realise that it is time to build the world again.
In both kinds of tragedies, your worldview is shattered. You have to work on rebuilding everything from the ground up. Whatever reality you experienced is gone now, and the less you cling to it, the easier it will become to grieve its loss. The first step in moving on from any tragedy is to think less and less about the older version of reality.
This is your new day and a new reality. Think of it as a world you have been born into. These are the cards you have been handed. Everything from here onwards has to be built from scratch. You will have to learn new skills, new coping mechanisms, new beliefs, and new ways of seeing the world.
You cannot build your new worldview on old grievances. Those guardrails might restrict you and prevent you from rising again. Old grievances, held on to for too long, can become your shackles. You have to recognise that the past is something that has happened to you. The future is what you have to build from whatever you have been handed.
Tragedies, unfortunately, are inevitable. You cannot run away from them. But if you start treating them as the closure of your old reality and begin considering today as the rebuilding of a new one, the sooner you will be able to move beyond them.
This is by no means saying that you cannot grieve. This process of rebuilding, unfortunately, has to happen while you are grieving. The pain will gradually ease as you continue to move forward in life. I wish there were an easier way, but there isn’t.
This is the only way that works. I know because my entire life has been one unfortunate tragedy, and I have followed the same playbook.