grief
How do you grieve?
I realized recently that I've never quite confronted grief as a concept-that considering all the opportunities my life has given me to grieve, or would normally force someone to grieve, I have not. I don't know how to, and I think that I ought to, even if it just means eventually reaching the place Zhuāngzǐ did at his wife's death, where he transcended grief.
In many arenas I've found it alarmingly easy to give up the self and become one with the world like the Buddhist scriptures say we should, although the ease with which I have achieved that state has rendered it less useful than it might be after serious questing and study. Merging-and therefore attachment, its less savory relative-come without struggle. So maybe there's this trade going on: I got ego sacrifice easy but I haven't the faintest clue what to do about grief.
I ask again: How do you grieve? How have you grieved? I think my goal here isn't to overcome something in particular-I have probably been locked in the threshold of a grieving process for years upon years-but to reach the heart of grief.
Years of life have placed me over and over at grief's doorway and I have stayed there, wandering the gardens and looking through the windows, not realizing I could step inside, perhaps not wanting to because it is so forbidding a place. It is time that I took off my shoes and walked inside. I will not like it. I will go anyway. When I think about it, it hurts just as much to stay outside.
I realized recently that I've never quite confronted grief as a concept-that considering all the opportunities my life has given me to grieve, or would normally force someone to grieve, I have not. I don't know how to, and I think that I ought to, even if it just means eventually reaching the place Zhuāngzǐ did at his wife's death, where he transcended grief.
In many arenas I've found it alarmingly easy to give up the self and become one with the world like the Buddhist scriptures say we should, although the ease with which I have achieved that state has rendered it less useful than it might be after serious questing and study. Merging-and therefore attachment, its less savory relative-come without struggle. So maybe there's this trade going on: I got ego sacrifice easy but I haven't the faintest clue what to do about grief.
I ask again: How do you grieve? How have you grieved? I think my goal here isn't to overcome something in particular-I have probably been locked in the threshold of a grieving process for years upon years-but to reach the heart of grief.
Years of life have placed me over and over at grief's doorway and I have stayed there, wandering the gardens and looking through the windows, not realizing I could step inside, perhaps not wanting to because it is so forbidding a place. It is time that I took off my shoes and walked inside. I will not like it. I will go anyway. When I think about it, it hurts just as much to stay outside.