Practices That Have Helped: Focusing on the Present

Over the last few weeks, I have heard from multiple people, in multiple places and circumstances, saying the same thing: stay focused on the present.  That can be a very difficult thing to do for those of us who are grief-stricken.  Oftentimes our minds are going in every which direction and living in the present moment can be a major challenge for us.  Our minds spend a lot of time in the past, focusing on past memories of our deceased loved ones.  We may have a strong yearning and aching in our hearts for a time in our lives that is over and will not be returning.  Our minds might then drift into the future, and then we can become anxious and overwhelmed, thinking about all the negative things that could happen to us -- we simply have no way of envisioning a positive future for ourselves.  Life might begin to feel very bleak and dire for us.

The fact is that none of us knows what the future holds.  Think about where you were 10, 20, 30 years ago.  Did you ever imagine back then that your life would be where it is today?  I sure didn't.  If anything, if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that my predictions of how my life would look in the future have almost always been wrong.  How many of us, back in 2017, would have correctly answered the question "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?"

When we really think about it, the present is all we have.  Things and events constantly crop up in our lives that we didn't foresee.  And it's not just the future that we have an incomplete picture of -- every now and then I will hear about someone from my past, many years ago, and I will learn about something that was going on in their lives during the time that I knew them that I wasn't aware of.  In that sense, we don't fully know the past either, or we're remembering it with a lot of missing information.

Back to the present.  There's a saying I try to remember whenever I feel worried or anxious: "Mile by mile, life's a trial.  Yard by yard, life's not so hard.  Inch by inch, life's a cinch."  Life becomes more manageable when we focus on what's immediately in front of us and leave everything else out.  The past has happened and cannot be changed, and the future is unknowable.  What's become important for me is what I do and how I live for today -- not in a sense of "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die" -- but in terms of "What can I do to make my life better right now?  And what can I do to make the lives better of those around me?"

Over at hopefultransitions.com, Sherry Williams White has a great article, Living in the Moment.  Sherry was 26 years old when she lost her 47 year-old mom to cancer.  She knows the difficulty in trying to stay focused on the present:

"When someone you love or care about dies, you experience a wide range of emotions. Your mind goes over and over what happened, wanting to know every detail. You begin to think about all of the things you could have said, should have said, could have done, and should have done. You begin to think about all of the things that person meant to you. All that you shared in life and all of the wishes you have for the future. You begin to focus on what will happen next. How will you go on? You think of all there is to do and all there will be to do in the future. As you fill your head with this huge list of things that must be done or will have to be done, it is easy to feel overwhelmed."

Sherry also has a number of practical tips in her article on how we can live more in the present moment. Like anything else, it takes practice, but is very much worth doing!

Personal Musings: Dreaming About Fish, Death, and Resurrection

The night before last, I had a very interesting dream.  I can't recall a lot of the details, but I do recall standing near a huge table, and I could see a fish lying on that table.  The fish was barely alive -- I could see it with its mouth open, breathing slowly in a very labored fashion.  I then saw a large aquarium tank sitting on the table, and without hesitation I picked up the fish and tossed it into the tank.  I then saw it begin to wriggle in the water, slowly regaining its breath -- and then it began to dart around quickly, its life and energy regained.  That's all I can remember....

I wonder if there was a message for me in that dream.  One of the hardest things for me to witness was my mom and our pets slowing down and watching their life dwindle down to nothing.  But maybe I have the wrong perspective -- maybe our earthly lives really are like being "fish out of water" -- we can survive out of that water, briefly -- and then we return to the water to the Source, to God, or whatever you want to call it -- and then we gain our life and strength back.  Whatever it is, it gives me hope that the end of our time spent on Earth is not the end of our lives -- it merely is the end of one chapter, one experience -- and that there is much more life and experiences awaiting us after our Earthly journey....

Words of Comfort: The Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita, a revered text from the Hindu religion, was produced during the first millenium B.C.E. Originally written in Sanskrit, there are over 300 translations in English alone. I particularly like this translation of verse 2:28 from Juan Mascaró: "Invisible before birth are all beings and after death invisible again. They are seen between two unseens. Why in this truth find sorrow?"

Philosophy of Dying: Confucius and Zhuang Zhou

Alexus McLeod is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Asian Studies at the University of Connecticut.  In 2017 he penned an article: "What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About Dealing With Our Own Grief".  He references writings from Zhuang Zhou, the Daoist philosopher who lived during the 4th Century B.C.E.  One particular insightful incident occurred when a friend of his, Hui Shi, finds him joyfully beating on a drum following the death of his wife, and reprimands Zhuang Zhou for his behavior.  Zhuang's response?

"Zhuang Zhou replies that when his wife first died, he was as upset as anyone would be following such a loss. But then he reflected on the circumstances of her origins – how she came to be through changes in the elements that make up the cosmos. He was able to shift his vision from seeing things from the narrowly human perspective to seeing them from the larger perspective of the world itself. He realized that her death was just another of the changes of the myriad things constantly taking place in the world. Just as the seasons progress, human life generates and decays.  In reflecting on life in this way, Zhuang Zhou’s grief disappeared." 

Of course, grief doesn't go away so easily for so many of us, but Zhuang Zhou's perspective might be helpful to meditate on.  Dr. McLeod also mentions how the Chinese philosopher Confucius  (c. 551 B.C.E. - c. 479 B.C.E.) suggested a three-year mourning period after the death of one's parent -- quite extraordinary by modern standards.  But for Confucius, anything less would not be appropriate.  According to McLeod, there is also a communal and ancestral component to our grief that cannot be ignored:

"There is more to the Confucian response to death than grief. Our encounter with others inevitably changes us. Those closest to us, according to the early Confucians, particularly family members, play the greatest role in determining who we are. In that sense, we are representatives of particular communities than detached and autonomous individuals.

After all, many of our physical features and personalities originate from our ancestors. In addition, we learn many of our attitudes, preferences and characteristic ways of acting from our families, friends and neighbors – the creators of our culture. So, when we consider the question of what we are as individuals, the answer necessarily encompasses members of our closest community."