The Speaker
The speaker in "The Thing Is" has a holistic perspective about life: life brings the immense weight of grief, but the speaker argues that one must insist upon loving life. The speaker should never be equated to the poet, but this argument (to love life regardless of difficult circumstances) reflects the Bass's own perspective about affirming life. In an interview with the writer Laurie Wagner, Bass states that people can't just be receptive to joy. They must grab joy and insist on it. In the context of the poem, this "joy" that Bass speaks about is an unconditional love for life.
The Reader
The speaker in "The Thing Is" directly addresses the reader with the pronoun "you." The speaker instructs the reader to love life no matter how heavy an experience of grief may feel. The "you" addressed in the poem can be anyone regardless of their circumstances, because grief and love are universal human experiences.
