The verb “to bear” involves a minimum of understanding and acceptance. If a happening that concerns us is so removed from our normal existence that we cannot understand it, let along accept it, then it might be said that are faced with an absurd challenge: that of
bearing the unbearable. In such circumstances, something has to break… often in the mind of the victim.
The common cause of this nasty situation is death. Animals—human animals in particular—have never understood death, and never will... particularly when it hits loved ones: a husband, a wife, a close and intimate friend, parents or, above all, innocent children. In such cases, the mind “explodes”, as it were.
In former times, individuals who were suffering from an unbearable happening might have sought comfort in religion or traditional social circles. Even the
danse macabre was, in a way, a “solution” for bearing the unbearable.
But remedies of that kind have disappeared to a large extent. These days, strangely enough, the Internet can become an outlet for such an explosion of the mind. It serves as a hitherto unknown means of
naming the unnameable.
