Those of us going through a period of grief stumble through our lives, wondering how the rest of the world is continuing to turn. Surely the gap is more than the earth can bear. Surely the absence of our friend, our partner, our child, will render the earth barren. And then, very slowly, the grief becomes a part of us. A smaller part. Our joy begins to grow and the sadness becomes a piece tucked into our hearts that doesn’t sit so close to the surface, cutting us open every time it’s jostled by a memory. And then a interesting thing happens. We become one of the masses of people who don’t notice that the end of the world is going on for someone else. Our own happiness mars our vision – we become blind to the suffering of others. We are no longer as sad – surely the rest of the world must be happy as well. We project our own feelings about the world onto it – our own sense of peace or unrest becomes all we see. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing – sometimes our positivity can make the world a better place. Sometimes our sadness can encourage others to open up and speak about their own sorrows. But in general being closed off from others means simply that: we go on about our days, our weeks, our years, assuming that the world exists, by and large, the way we are seeing it. When we are sad the world is ending. When we are happy the world rejoices.