In The Face of Tragedy

I’ve been thinking a lot about tragedy lately.

Tragedy’s a noun that has two different, related definitions in the Oxford dictionary:

• an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.
• a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character.

While the former seems less relevant, I find that in many ways I feel like I’ve been visualizing the events in my life in a weird way before they really happen. I will snap in and out of moments where I don’t know if I’m experiencing something in the present moment, or if what I’m living through is something that will happen moments in the future. It’s always “I feel like I’ve done this or seen this before,” only now it’s repeatedly happening. I don’t know what to make of this constantly coming back into my life. But I really do feel that I’m living in this weird state of not being an active participant in my life. I’m merely just experiencing this sort of script that is happening to me, with no clear idea of what I can do in response.

But I want to go back to the first definition: “an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.” I don’t think I need to go…