Grief

When our spirit tells us it is time to weep, we should weep.  It is part of the ritual, if you will, of putting sadness in perspective and gaining control of the situation. . . . Grief has a purpose.  Grieving does not mean you are weak  It is the first step toward regaining balance and strength.  Grieving is part of the tempering process.   -Joseph M. Marshall III

We tend to look at grief as a response to losing something or somebody in our lives, especially to death.  And while we like to tell people to take their time and grieve, we also tend to suggest to people who are grieving that it's important to move on with their lives and not let the grief consume them.  As with everything else there must be balance, of course, but coming to terms with grief is something that none of us can understand for others, and it's important that we respect the grief of others and let it fulfill its purpose.

There's a myth in many cultures that says that human beings always have to be "strong," though strong isn't really well defined.  Refusing to grieve and simply moving on with your life when faced with loss is not a productive way of dealing with adversity; nor is it an effective way of achieving balance in our lives.  Allowing ourselves to grieve is truly the only way of moving past difficult losses, and the decision of whether to grieve or not is ours alone.

We grieve when we lose loved ones and acquaintances; we grieve when we lose jobs or even some material objects that have special meaning to us; we grieve when we graduate from school and "lose" the routines that have become so normal to us.  If we don't grieve, these things can stick with us for a very long time--and while there's no need to try to repress the memories of them, we do need to make sure that those memories don't bring us down any more, and that they don't ruin what otherwise might be a very positive time in our lives.

We must allow ourselves to grieve, and we must allow others to grieve in their own ways, in their own time.  Moving on with our lives depends upon how we grieve, and it's up to us to make sure we do so fully.


Questions to consider:

Why do so many people seem to be so uncomfortable with grief?

In what ways are you most comfortable grieving?

How do our lives play out if we don't allow ourselves to grieve a significant loss?


(From our new year of daily meditations, in progress now.)

Abundance or lack?

When you have too much month for your paycheck, then
what you need to do is realize that there is abundance all
around you, and focus on the abundance and not your lack
and as night follows day abundance will come to you.
-Sidney Madwed

It took me many, many years to be able to focus on abundance rather than lack, and I can honestly say that I'm still not there yet.  I still fear running out of money and resources; I still fear not having enough food someday and not being able to meet my responsibilities and commitments.  My focus has always been on what I don't have rather than what I have, and now that I'm more often focused on gratitude for what I have, I find that I have more and I don't fear losing it nearly as much.

In my family when I was growing up, the focus was always on lack.  We had little money--sometimes none at all for a month at a time when my father would drink away his paycheck the weekend he received it.  My mother was really good at keeping us fed, so we didn't starve at all, but that was partly because she grew up being poor, also, and she had learned how to stretch food to amazing lengths.  Because of her poverty, though, she focused on what was missing, and she and my father taught us kids to do the same.

The world is full of resources for us, and it's up to us to take advantage of them--nobody's going to fill our baskets for us.  Unfortunately, many of us take a defeatist attitude that says, "I'll never be rich, so I'll never have the good things."  But the truth is that we can have the good things--we have to keep focusing on the abundance around us and figure out ways to tap into it rather than wishing against all hope that we could somehow have just a slice of it.

A lot of it has to do with choices, of course.  I could have a lot more money than I have now if I were to choose to do some work other than teaching, but I love to teach and I'm good at it, so I keep with it.  I do without certain things that I don't really need in order to experience abundance with other things--my wife and I never go to movies in expensive theaters, for example, but with the money we save there, we take nice little weekend trips to nearby areas.  Abundance doesn't mean having it all, but it does mean experiencing a rich and fulfilling life.


-from our new year of Daily Meditations, in progress now.