These remarks were delivered this evening at the Creatively Critical Tech Speaker Series at Illinois State University.
"There is no good way to say this."
These are the opening words of Yiyun Li’s latest book Things in Nature Only Grow about life after the death by suicide of both
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We grieve because we love. We grieve because we care. We grieve because we know that the machines do not, and that the community we try to foster -- on campus, in the classroom, in our scholarly works -- is threatened with erasure. We grieve because we fear forgetting; we worry that people will forget what is beautiful and what is difficult and what is joyous and what is horrible about education. We worry that, if we do not grieve, we give up the struggle to go on, to persevere, to live.
But we do not, we should not grieve alone. We should not be made to feel alone, feel crazed by our grief, feel crazed for grieving. We can, we should grieve together, grieve in public, grieve in protest. Such is comfort – "com" + "fort," a word that means "with" + "strength."