"Pass Us by and Forgive Us Our Happiness"
Dostoevsky’s The Idiot
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John Koenig, in his book , The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, coins a striking term— “Dead Reckoning”—to describe the peculiar grief we feel for someone we hardly knew, yet whose death leaves an indelible mark on us.
I wasn’t much more than a child when Marilyn Monroe died in 1962, but I can imagine the way her passing sent waves of mourning across the world. People who never met her still grieved, feeling the strange sting of loss.
And then there was that August morning, August 31, 1997. I still remember hearing the news over the radio —Princess Diana was dead. I had a speech to give that Sunday, but the words felt heavy in my mouth, like stones. The air in the room was thick, almost suffocating, as if the grief had weight, pressing down on all of us. It was everywhere, this sorrow for a woman most of us had only known through screens and headlines. Somehow, her death struck us deep.
What perplexes me is how we, as humans, carry this capacity for empathy. Why do we mourn the death of someone we’ve never met? I’ve been pondering this all week, especially as I watched people move through Glasgow Central Station—rushing down the stairs, passing a young girl quietly sitting in a sleeping bag, hoping for help, for someone to notice her. And yet, not a single person stopped.
Why is it that we can weep for a stranger thousands of miles away, but ignore the suffering of the person sitting right in front of us? Have we become desensitized, numbed by the endless tide of need we see on our streets? Or is it something more complicated, a defence mechanism in a world where the pain can sometimes feel too overwhelming to face?
It’s confusing, deeply so.
Note: When Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot returned from convalescing in Switzerland, He observed how society had lost their moral compass and declared "Pass Us by and Forgive Us Our Happiness."
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” — James: 1:27 ESV