Not Everything Needs a Blog

It's okay to grieve in silence sometimes.

Sunrise in Gaza. (Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

There was going to be a full blog today — a funny one, too, about people getting irrationally mad at paragliders, and paragliding in general, to suggest that perhaps the ongoing bloodshed in Gaza and Israel has led to some truly deranged breaks from reality. It was going to be a good blog, with some good jokes. I promise.

But, as it often does, reality intervened, hard. Suddenly, a silly little blog about random cranks and pearl clutches getting mad at kites doesn’t seem very important after Israeli forces allegedly killed upwards of five hundred people by bombing Gaza City’s Al-Ma’amadani hospital, where frightened Palestinian men, women, and children had sheltered themselves against that exact danger. Frankly, nothing seems particularly important in the face of such profound levels of death and despair—least of all a blog, no matter how eloquent and profound and sincerely it attempts to plumb meaning from the depths of unthinkable agony like this. Sometimes the only thing to do is to shut up.

So, no blog today. Instead, go tell your loved ones how loved they are. Take a beat to make the people around you a little happier, or at least let them know that they’re not alone in their grief. Or just stay quiet. Don’t feel like you need to say something just for the sake of saying something. Make a little space for things to come together on their own. Or maybe they won’t. That’s fine too. Not everything needs to make sense all the time. Not every tragedy needs a chorus of commentary. Not everything needs a blog.