Changes that Throw Us...

It is interesting how the human psyche can ignore obvious truths to increase our comfort level.  When tooling along in life, it is easy to think that everything is ok and will remain that way into oblivion.  Not so. Yet somehow we feel like we got punched in the gut when reality slaps our happy denial in the face.

Friends move.  Sometimes clear across the country, or even clear across the ocean.  We want to be happy for those people, but still understand that we are sad for ourselves.  Family gets separated for a variety of different reasons.  Sometimes we want to be happy for them too, but are deeply saddened in our hearts.  Marriages end.  People die.  And we become aware of our own potential for break down.

Suddenly our ignoring human psyche can't find the portal back into denial.  Then we begin to ask ourselves all sorts of questions.  What if my sister or child or best friend wants to move a world away?  What if my best friend dies unexpectedly?  Could my marriage be in trouble without me knowing it?  What if I lose my job?  Is my health in jeopardy?  What would I do if a loved one got the big C diagnosis?  And there we are tossed about on a tempest sea with no direction home and at a loss for comforting thoughts to guide us through the darkness.

A truly difficult question is how we support the ones we love while taking care of our wounds.  When we mature we know we can't say, "I know you have a really great opportunity for a job, but I really don't want you to move 13 hours away from me."  And yet that may be the lingering thought we battle with when the details of a plan are laid out in front of us.  Another great difficulty is when someone close to someone we love passes onto the next leg of the journey.  We all know from a very young age that people die.  Everyone will.  And yet, comforting loved ones who are mourning a loss is very difficult.  We hurt, perhaps very deeply for them and the loss they are grieving, and they hurt, and we are at a loss to bring genuine comfort.

There is probably a grand answer for this question of how to comfort, when we need comfort ourselves, or how to celebrate when the celebration brings us greif.  Today, the answer eludes me and the juxtaposition of emotion simply exists in the dissonance of the moment in which we live.  The only thing that I know for certain is that it is best to fully experience whatever you may be feeling, because then at some point it will dissipate.  If stuffed, avoided, neglected or denied, you can count on it growing and causing more problems, difficult problems as you sail back to that portal of ignorant bliss where we hide from ourselves the difficult truths that we must face in our lives.  Joyful surprises come often, miracles happen, love abounds AND grief and loss are inevitable as well.