One thing we can all agree on is that life has its ups and downs. We all live our lives in cycles, phases, and eras full of experiences that are all along the spectrum.
This being said, pain is a certainty for all of us. The flavor of pain that I’m talking about here is loss. We have things that are important to us, we get attached, and then they’re gone.
A few years ago my Dad was experiencing some tingling in his feet and said he had numbness is his legs. He had been feeling pain in his ribs so he’d been taking pain medication. He thought he’d hurt himself and either broke or bruised them by accidentally hitting himself as he pulled the rope start on his gas powered weed eater. He went in to get things checked out and after some tests they found that he was riddled with cancer; ribs, spine, pelvis, it was everyone.
It was within a week that he lost use of his legs and never walked again. A mass had grown on his spine and pinched off his spinal cord. He lived in that state until he died which was about two years. He’d always been a reader and while laying in bed and literally sitting around for those two years he read voraciously. He never complained and told me he was committed to do and good of a job as he could to “suffer well”. He’d reread Man’s Search for Meaning and The Tibetan Book on Living and Dying throughout that time. I’d read Man’s Search for Meaning before and reread it again while he was reading it.
After he died I finally brought myself to read The Tibetan Book on Living and Dying. I’m not a buddhist but curious about most religions and since I’d done the dance with loved ones dying I wanted to learn about what I’d thought this book had to convey.
I don’t know what happens after we die. My own belief is that no-one knows. It’s a mystery that provokes endless debate and inquiry but this is what I believe to be certain-we lose absolutely everything.
Whatever is on the other side of this life/dimension/whatever can’t be taken with us. If there is a “life after death” or “eternal life” or reincarnation I have no clue. (It could be true or it could be humanity’s obsession with immortality, that’s another blog.) But the next life doesn’t have a time capsule full of all our “important” stuff waiting for us. No people. No money. No favorite pair of sunglasses you lost at the lake in 2009.
In studies around stress and loss think about the top three to five or… the top ten… or all of them. This is what I believe we must face when we die. In the end we lose EVERYTHING! Our loved ones, our home, all our possessions, our health, our job, money, etc etc…
How do we prepare for that?
Think about it… plenty of us struggle and lose our shit if we lose our car keys. Or Starbucks is out of our the sugar free caramel for our latte. If we struggle to handle losing small thing or one or two of those major things without it crushing us, how will we face the termination of every attachment we have?
This is why I believe we need to be training to actually experience pain and not fade away, shrink, contract, close our hearts, or numb out. And I’m with you here. This is also why I talk about how important your time is and who you choose to spend that time with.
The opportunity:
What are the things in life that cause you to numb about and shut down?
What do you use to numb about?
What would you like to fully experience that you know you’re not prepared to in life?
What are you doing to train yourself to feel and fully experience life?
Thanks for your time, have an amazing day.