The Wisdom of Loss, and the Paradox of Pain
For years I have watched my grandmother’s mind unfold — her consciousness slowly slip. The time I have spent sitting with my dying grandmother has morphed into a meditation on mortality. While painful, this time has become a gift.
One day I too will succumb to entropy. My own life will end and who knows what will happen next. Will I be proud of how I spend my limited time?
If I am lucky enough to live to 80 years old I will have spent roughly 233,640 hours sleeping, 29,300 hours cooking, 14,806 hours reading, and 42,807 hours eating.
How many hours will I spend caring for others? How many people will know I love them? Will I be more kind than cruel?
Will I finally master the art of not needing to be right, before I expire? How many hours do I have left to feel the wind on my skin, and rain against my hair? How many chances to be present have I squandered?
Will I have chances to extend my life? Or are all things predestined? When I do finally die, will the secrets of life be revealed? Or is the afterlife just as magically mysterious as life in the Eden of Earth?
If you lived your life knowing you will one day die, what would you change? Would you delete social media? Finally read that pile of books on your nightstand? Could you fall in love more freely?
I vow to spend more time watching bugs crawl, planting flowers, and telling people I love them because this is easier than vowing to be always present. To float in and out of presence is deeply human. Human life is too hard at times to always feel grateful. Joy is as fleeting as a hummingbird in autumn.
One day my wife will also die. This truth feels most poignant when she smiles and I know I will love her forever. I pray we can be dancing orbs together in the afterlife — to dance in our love forever. When we fight I can no longer stay angry long. Grudges are a colossal waste of our limited lives.
Communities are as interconnected and delicate as gossamer spider webs decorated in dew. The importance of our fragile social ties must also be a part of the secrets revealed after death. Why else would there be so much synchronicity in our meetings? We need people to help us enjoy small joys like laughter and shared smiles.
Solitude is where we find other joys like a perfect latte or breeze through spring trees. These small joys make the great pains worthwhile. When my grandmother dies I will grieve, but I will also be thankful because my grief is no larger than the depth of love she shared in her life.
As I sit with my grief I am reminded of the paradox of pain; the less you allow yourself to feel your pain, the more it hurts. However, the braver you are in embracing your pain, the less settled and deep your pain becomes. Learning to welcome pain as an inevitable guest is one of the hardest lessons I continue to learn in my life.
Many people don’t know that Freud was a physician before becoming a psychotherapist. In his medical practice he found that many of his patients could resolve their physical pain through naming and embracing their emotional pain — thus discovering a mind/body connections yogis and mystics have described for millennia.
If ignored, pain will knit herself into your being like an errant thorn bush. I do not have all the answers for how to unknit pain from your body — this is an art I am still learning. The only balm I know is to sit in my mortality meditation until the waters of my tears wash the fabric of my being clean.
