Post a Comment On: Inner Pearls

My view is that as humans, we are unable to have a clear comprehension of what grief is, other than to be able to say that it differs in an intensity of its experience, its duration and its cause just as with each human being that encounters it.

The most immediate association with grief that I am able to make is with an impression of loss. I am familiar with an energy as it moves through me and which triggers disbelief, denial, anger, rage, shame and fear. What is harder for me to acknowledge, is that it is not until this energy has moved through my heart that I am able to experience any growing sense of peace or revelation or indeed blessing which such an experience may also have been carrying in its wake.

I sense that a large part of why I have always struggled with grief, and this may be true for many, is because of how as children, we are indoctrinated with ideas (and well-meant as they undoubtedly are) about values and of protecting and preserving what we care about. This naturally extends to our aspirations and ideals of what we believe will provide for us and others with a happy and fulfilling life.

So it would seem to be that we are immersed in a wealth of information about what it is that we should be doing and aiming for in life and the quality of relationships with one another that is considered good. What I don't see however, is that we are as comfortable or as adept with suggestions as to handle and process the disappointments of not attaining or experiencing something, of changing course in life or of having to let go of something before we are ready. We're builders, co-creators if you prefer and it would seem as if it is in our human nature to strive to leave something of ourselves, a legacy in a transient and finite world.

If it is part of our instinct to give of ourselves and to express in ways which will yield benefit, it can seem counter-productive to retreat into a shell and to withdraw from life. An unspoken quandary which we must face is 'have we failed somehow, either of our own or others' expectations of us?' This is where grief can touch us at our most vulnerable and it will be expressed through us in a myriad of ways. But that moment - that moment in which it rests in our heart for just an instant, is a turning point and one which will determine whether we set out on a path of experience of believing life to be adversarial or instead to be unified and benevolent.

Many years ago, a friend presented me with a copy of a poem written by Robert Frost, called 'The Road Not Taken'. Here it is:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.