Industry is the Enemy of Melancholy

I was fortunate to retire from my traditional work career at the relatively young age of 56. Retiring early had become a goal of mine ever since I observed how much my father enjoyed his 30 year post-work life. My father was perfectly content to leave the working life behind and fill up his days with fishing, tending his vegetable garden, solving the daily crossword puzzle, taking naps and watching the home town Sports teams on his television.

When the time came for me to retire, I had an idyllic vision of spending my days in similar fashion. Finally, after 56 years, I was looking forward to being my own boss – thrilled to have the opportunity to wake up every day and do whatever it was that interested me. I believed that every day would feel like Christmas!

And those first few months of retirement really were magical. Gone was the stress of having to be available 24/7 to my company’s sales and management teams who were battling to close million dollar deals, gone was the daily 3 to 4 hour commute in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and gone was the chronic sleep deficit.

It was goodbye to all that. What replaced it was the pleasure of deciding which book to read from my list of “books I always wanted to read“, fly fishing in the beautiful rivers of New England, taking long rides on my electric bike, spending quality time with my grandkids, and attending stimulating concerts and plays with my wife.

Something begin to happen, however, that I was not expecting about six months into my retirement. As the novelty and thrill of being retired began to subside I began to notice that I was experiencing melancholy moods and moments of soul searching. I was spending time reflecting on topics like past loss, the certainty of my physical and mental decline, and the uncertainty of how future generations will deal with the big existential challenges the world is facing.

Without the rigors of work to occupy my attention, my mind was set free to wander where it wanted to go and to my surprise I discovered that it often wanted to contemplate dark and doleful topics. I was not that concerned about these sometime melancholy moods because I reasoned that it is one of life’s natural reactions to harbor feelings of both happiness and sadness; and I remembered the wise old grandmother who once said: “A good day is a laugh and a cry“. Still I wondered why my pensive thoughts were increasing in frequency at a time in my life when I expected to be most content.

Then I happened to read about a study conducted by Harvard psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert which could help to explain the phenomenon I was experiencing. These researchers developed a smartphone app that allowed them to collect the thoughts, feelings, and actions of a broad range of people at random moments as they went about their daily activities.

Using the app, Killingsworth and Gilbert asked people what they were doing and how happy they were while doing it. They sifted through 25,000 responses from more than 5000 people and reported that 46% of the people were thinking about things other than what they were actually doing at the time (in other words, they were daydreaming about something other than what they were doing). They discovered that those people who were daydreaming typically were not happy; while those who were fully engaged in their activity were the happiest. 

The researchers wrote that unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating instead events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all. This “stimulus-independent thought” or “mind wandering” appears to be the brain’s default mode of operation.

Although this ability is a remarkable evolutionary achievement that allows people to learn, reason, and plan, it apparently comes with an emotional cost. “We see evidence that a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” they said in their report. The bottom line is that we’re more likely to think negative thoughts when we let our minds wander.

Maybe that is why people who are waiting in line or stuck in traffic appear to be more irritable. And maybe my melancholy moods have increased in frequency since leaving work simply because my mind is no longer required to spend 10+ hours a day focused on the demands of my job.

This study confirms that many philosophical and religious traditions are on to something true when they teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and by training their practitioners to resist mind wandering and concentrate on the here and now. Yoga teachers and those teaching meditation practices usually stress the importance of “mindfulness” or “being present” for a good reason — because when we do, it usually puts us in a better mood.

When I look back at my work career, I can see now that those moments when I felt most fulfilled was when I was in the middle of product development activities, being part of a team inventing electronic test solutions to solve complex manufacturing challenges. During those moments all the powers of my mind were fully engaged in solving the problem at hand and there was a sense that the results of the team’s collective work would have a positive impact on the company, our customers, and to a certain extent, society in general.

William F. Buckley put his finger on the unique ability that meaningful work has in preventing the onset of depressive feelings when he wrote “Industry is the enemy of Melancholy“. Simply put, if we are busy doing work that requires a focused mind it becomes difficult for the mind to wander and contemplate spirit dampening topics that are likely to cause the blues.

I happened to listen to an online homily about work that touched on a similar theme from a spiritual point of view that was given by Bishop Robert Barron. Bishop Barron made the point that our very being is deeply influenced by our actions and that the kind of work we do has a lot to do with the kind of people we become.

People who have no work usually struggle with depression because our sense of dignity often comes from work. Those who suffer from unemployment feel not just the financial burden of a lost paycheck, but also the loss of dignity brought about from the loss of their livelihood.

When you are feeling down one of the things psychologists recommend is to get to work on a project. It tends to make you feel better because work engages the powers of mind, will, creativity, and imagination and we become awakened when we give ourselves over to a project.

It doesn’t have to be a grand or complicated project. In fact, Bishop Barron mentioned that he found that one of the things that brings him the most satisfaction is doing the dishes. His day is usually filled with meetings and intellectual activities, so it is a relief for him to do some simple physical work at the end of the day. It brings him satisfaction to make order out of a dirty kitchen and to see everything clean and in its place when he is done.

The Bishop referenced this lyric from Bob Dylan’s song “Forever Young” to emphasize that work is a blessing and that souls can not fully prosper when their hands and feet are idle.

“May your hands always be busy, may your feet always be swift, may you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift”

Bob Dylan; Forever Young

Not all work is physical, though. Pope John Paul II categorized different kinds of work for the faithful. There is physical work (the work of the body), intellectual work (the work of the mind), spiritual work (the feeding of one’s soul), and moral work (charitable work on behalf of the poor and mistreated). When we are attentive to each of these categories of work in our daily life, it is then that we best fulfill our divine potential and become collaborators with the purpose of God.

I like that idea. May we all come to see our work, in all its different manifestations, as collaborating with the purpose of God and as bringing us into a more perfect union with a higher power.

There is a Season for Everything Under the Sun

One of the things I enjoy about my blogging hobby is that it leads me to discover authors who are writing thoughtful blogs on interesting subjects. I recently came across one such blog entry written by Maria Popova who was reviewing a book by Katherine May titled Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times.

In her book, May writes about her experience living through a deep and disquieting period that she describes as one of the “winters of her life”. The thing about the blog that caught my attention was the author’s perspective that life is like the seasons, constantly changing throughout our lifetimes.

We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.

Excerpts from Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

Our culture leads us to believe that life progresses along a linear scale from helplessness towards ever-increasing flourishing, but in reality life is like the seasons, operating in a cyclical fashion, with many periods of ups and downs. Imagining life to operate only in a linear fashion can be harmful when people start to falsely believe that something is wrong with their life if it does not get progressively better as they get older or when they need to take detours along the way.

If we accept that our lives are more cyclical, with periods containing many Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter seasons of the spirit, then we can become better equipped to understand that there will periods of happiness and sadness throughout our life – as well as periods of strength and fragility.

When you start thinking about periods of your life as seasons, you come to realize that people live through many winters in their lifetime – some mild, some severe – and that it is possible, like the trees, to emerge from those winters not only undiminished but ready for new growth.

It is reassuring to think that our winter seasons do not need to be fallow and unproductive and that they can be a productive period when we are given the time and space we need to go on growing. Albert Camus wrote “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer”. If we garden the winters of the soul with care, we can set in place seeds that will bloom into future summers of strength.

Katherine May makes the observation that trees enter a waiting phase during winter where the tree has everything it needs to make it through severe weather:

“Its fallen leaves are mulching the forest floor, and its roots are drawing up the extra winter moisture, providing a firm anchor against seasonal storms. Its ripe cones and nuts are providing essential food in this scarce time for mice and squirrels, and its bark is hosting hibernating insects and providing a source of nourishment for hungry deer. It is far from dead. It is in fact the life and soul of the wood. It’s just getting on with it quietly. It will not burst into life in the spring. It will just put on a new coat and face the world again.“

We all need to take an example from the trees and approach the winter seasons of our life in a similar way. Retreat, face our our sadness, let go of the things in our life that are no longer bearing fruit, be nourished by the strong roots of our personal friends and communities and get ready to face the world again.

The winter seasons of our life are usually characterized by sadness that is triggered when we experience loss of one kind or another. Those of us who have lived through winters know that there are self-punishing ways to be sad, and self-healing ways to be sad. The key to skillful wintering is to learn the difference between the two so that we are stronger when the season begins to turn – just like the branches of a tree during the depths of winter are covered in tiny dormant buds that will spring to life when the weather turns.

Since we are all certain to encounter winter seasons during our life, May concludes with a warning against judging people when they are down on their luck and experiencing misfortune. It is better she writes to encourage empathy, compassion and understanding for those that we find suffering:

Here is another truth about wintering: you’ll find wisdom in your winter, and once it’s over, it’s your responsibility to pass it on. And in return, it’s our responsibility to listen to those who have wintered before us. It’s an exchange of gifts in which nobody loses out.

This may involve the breaking of a lifelong habit, one passed down carefully through generations: that of looking at other people’s misfortunes and feeling certain that they brought them upon themselves in a way that you never would. This isn’t just an unkind attitude. It does us harm, because it keeps us from learning that disasters do indeed happen and how we can adapt when they do. It stops us from reaching out to those who are suffering. And when our own disaster comes, it forces us into a humiliated retreat, as we try to hunt down mistakes that we never made in the first place or wrongheaded attitudes that we never held. Either that, or we become certain that there must be someone out there we can blame.

Watching winter and really listening to its messages, we learn that effect is often disproportionate to cause; that tiny mistakes can lead to huge disasters; that life is often bloody unfair, but it carries on happening with or without our consent. We learn to look more kindly on other people’s crises, because they are so often portents of our own future.

This is good advice for the next time you find the seasons changing in your life. Do not despair – remember that every season can be profitable for our growth and survival. I have lived long enough to know that we can experience winter seasons during the blush of our youth and that it is possible for spring and summer seasons to joyfully populate the twilight of our years.

There is no telling when good things or terrible things will happen to us and we cannot know the entire meaning of it all, but we can know that life can be beautiful even in the darkest of seasons. So rejoice during all your seasons under the sun and remember that all our emotions and actions, both negative and positive, have important meaning and we become more majestic when we learn from them all.

My Mind is in Darkness

There is a moment in the Rock Opera Jesus Christ Superstar, when Judas – right before he is about to commit suicide by hanging himself – sings out:

My mind is in darkness.
God, God I'm sick. I've been used,
And you knew it all the time.
God, God I'll never know why you chose me for your crime.

Judas’ realization that his mind was moving into darkness and his acknowledgement that he is sick struck me as a painful description of what many people with mental illness must feel as they try to overcome life’s challenges and often impossible expectations.

According to the World Health Organization, Depression is one of the most pervasive and debilitating health conditions in the world, one that affects an estimated 350 million people worldwide and contributes to the suicides of 800,000 people every year (one person every 40 seconds). It is recognized as being at the core of numerous mental health conditions and it is a leading cause of disability among adults.

In 2015, UCLA launched a study to better understand the causes of depression and to find ways to improve detection, evaluation, and treatment methods. Nearly 10,000 of the school’s freshmen were subjected to depression screening during their student orientation. The depression screening found that almost 12% of UCLA freshman reported “frequently” feeling depressed in the past year.

“That depression has not been identified as our number-one health issue astounds me,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in announcing the results of the screening program, “…if you haven’t experienced depression yourself, you know someone who has“.

The familiar symptoms of depression are persistent low mood, exhaustion, loss of appetite and sex drive, an inability to enjoy life or cope with everyday activities. Less obvious symptoms include disordered and distorted thinking, agitation, physical aches and pains, and insomnia.

Depression is difficult to treat because it is not really known what causes it. We know it results from a complex interaction of social, psychological, biological and genetic factors; and that people who have gone through adverse life events are more likely to develop depression.

Further complicating diagnosis, depression doesn’t always act the same way from individual to individual, or from episode to episode, which can range from mild to severe. An episode can last from a few days to weeks, months, or even years when there are multiple interrelating causes.

Treatment for depression is a bit of a guessing game, with only a 50% success rate after the first treatment. Each sufferer often needs something different. Antidepressants sometimes work, but not always. Talk therapies help some people, but not others. Someone may feel better with increased social contact, a change in relationships, or a new job. For others, becoming less busy or starting an exercise regime is what makes the difference. Sometimes the passage of time is what helps. Unfortunately, because depression plays havoc with the capacity to see things clearly, it’s hard for a depressed person to know what they need.

Too many people, especially in the past, shunned people suffering from mental disorders and labeled them as crazy, defective or even criminal – categorizing them as people to be avoided and deserving to be outcast from everyday normal society. Mental health professionals now say that those struggling with mental illness should not be punished or ostracized, but looked at instead with compassion and empathy – and provided access to medical treatment and services.

I was listening to Outsiders, a podcast series about the homeless community in Olympia, Washington that was developed by KNKX Public Radio and The Seattle Times. The team spent one year in the city documenting the stories of people grappling with the hardships of homelessness.

One episode tells the story of Jessica, a woman in her 30’s who has been homeless for two years. During her interview, Jessica reveals that her father left her when she was young because “he loved the drink more than he loved her“. Her mother became addicted to methamphetamines and shacked up with a series of boyfriends to support her drug habit. She was first molested at the age of 4 by one of her mother’s boyfriends and during her teen years she was pimped out to pay her mother’s bills.

Jessica was constantly moving and never lived in a stable home. She first got pregnant by an abusive boyfriend, who made her give up the child for adoption. She had a second child and lived in an apartment as a single mother for several years, but she was evicted when she could no longer afford to pay the rising rent. She lost custody of her daughter when she became homeless. She is striving to find employment and a place to live so she can reclaim her daughter; but she has developed a drug habit that helps her to block the pain she feels during the long nights spent in her tent under the city bridge. She is losing all hope.

So often, one’s lot in life is determined by its beginnings – whether a person grows up in an environment where they feel loved, respected and supported. What chance did Jessica have to become a functioning adult given the circumstances of her formative years and the trauma she has endured? How can a person live with hope when they grow up with nobody they can trust? Can I honestly say that my situation in life would be much different than Jessica’s if I had grown up under similar conditions?

As a society we are quick to judge people without knowing their full story. It is no surprise that the majority of the homeless population consists of individuals who have a tragic story to tell. Many suffer from PTSD like symptoms due to childhood traumas they suffered at the hands of their dysfunctional and abusive families.

Military veterans suffering from PTSD are provided subsidized government housing and free access to medical services to treat their symptoms; but no such programs are offered to homeless people who are left having to fend for themselves and end up falling through the cracks and becoming invisible.

The homeless population do not even benefit from temporary Government assistance programs which could have a meaningful positive impact to their life (like direct payments given to citizens through the stimulus plan) because they do not have a permanent address and there is no way to contact them.

Breaking the Blues

But you don’t have to be poor and homeless to suffer from depression. All you have to do is follow the lives of the rich and famous to understand that money and possessions do not guarantee happiness. The fact that there are over 12 thousand mental health facilities in the United States alone demonstrates that Depression is an equal opportunity illness that affects all levels of the socioeconomic ladder and every class of society.

Over the course of my life, I have encountered close friends and family members fighting to overcome frightening episodes of mental health distress that have darkened their minds. Most of them were fortunate enough to seek out and find professional treatment that helped them navigate their conditions.

To be honest, I have noticed that my own mind is subject to occasional bouts of the blues. These bouts appear irregularly in my life and it is often a mystery to me what brings them on or how long they will last. I tell myself it is OK to feel blue sometimes (reminding myself of the expression that a good day is a laugh and a cry) as long as it doesn’t negatively affect my relationships with the people I love or make me blind to the beauty that can be found in each day.

Over time I have discovered various coping techniques which I can employ to help me bust out of these bouts of the blues. Employing one or more of these techniques usually helps light to sneak in and drive out the darkness trying to spread over me.

• Exercise – I don’t know the science behind it, but I do know that when I exercise regularly I tend to feel better both physically and mentally.
• Meditation – Helps me to empty my mind, lowers my stress levels and allows me to look at life’s problems and uncertainties from a new perspective.
• The Arts – Listening to a concert, visiting a museum, attending a play; all of these activities bring to life for me the infinite capacity and wonder of the human spirit.
• Writing – When my first wife was fighting her losing battle with breast cancer, I began a Gratitude Journal. Every day I would write down three things that happened during that day that made me grateful. It helped me to think about something positive beyond the big sadness in my life. This Words To Live By blog also gives me a monthly opportunity to express myself about the topics that are taking up space in my mind.
• Religion – There is something comforting in attending Catholic Mass, knowing that the same rituals – celebrating the Good News that there is a higher power and that death is not the end – have been practiced by my ancestors and by untold millions worldwide for centuries.
• Wilderness – My happy place is being out in Nature, whether it be taking extended hikes through wilderness areas, walking the trails of my town, biking down a scenic road; or, my favorite – wading a cold mountain stream in search of hungry trout.
• Reading – A good book is like a magic carpet which can transport me to different worlds and different ages. Somerset Maugham felt that the habit of reading provides a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
• Grandchildren – Seeing the world through the eyes of your grandchildren is one of life’s most rewarding experiences. Watching them grow brings back happy memories of the past and instills hopeful thoughts of the future.
• Sleep – It’s hard to be joyful when you are tired. I’m amazed how much more pleasant the day is when I get a good night’s sleep or when I get to have a nap during the day.

I suppose all these blues busting techniques share one common element; they all tend to steer me away from the self-absorbed thoughts that typically run around in my head and they get me to start thinking about other people and about higher callings.

Warren Zevon, in his song “Don’t Let Us Get Sick“, describes how he uses this coping strategy to deal with his problems:

I thought of my friends
And the troubles they've had
To keep me from thinking of mine

Bob Dylan once gave his prescription for fighting the blues on his Theme Time Radio show, which I think is good advice to follow whenever we find our minds shrouded in darkness:

“I’m gonna tell you the magic formula for fightin’ the blues. What you got to do is go out and help someone more unfortunate than you. Go to an Orphanage. Play football with kids. Go to retirement homes. Go to Soup Kitchens. Go into Prisons. Go see some people. There are people everywhere who aren’t as well off as you. No matter how bad you have it, somebody’s got it worse. Instead of adding to the sadness in the world, why not lend a hand. Help somebody out and not just on Christmas. Why don’t you give it a try year round.“

Bob Dylan – Theme Time Radio Hour (Christmas Episode)

Wishing you all good mental health and a way for you to always make your dark clouds disappear…

‘Tis a Fearful Thing to Love

I recently facilitated a memorial service for my mother’s sister who lived to the goodly age of 100. My Aunt Jeannette Marie was a loving daughter, mother to 6 children, a grandmother, great grandmother and wife to two husbands.

The Last Photo of my Mother with her Sister

She was one of those people who would light up and make you feel good whenever you were in her presence. She always had a good word for everybody and even though she suffered tragedy in her life – her first dying in a train accident when he was just 24 – it was not in her nature to complain, choosing instead to focus on her many blessings.

With her sister’s passing, my mother, at 91 years old, became the last surviving person of that close 10 member family clan she grew up with. My mother was close to her sister and loved her dearly so it is natural that she is experiencing feelings of sadness, loss and grief. Especially because she no longer has anyone in her life who she can talk to about the “old days” and all the good and bad times they went through together as a family.

To begin the memorial service, I asked my wife to recite the poem ‘Tis a Fearful Thing’ that is believed to have been written by a Jewish Rabbi sometime in the 11th century. It is a moving poem about the intersection of grief and faith and love and it is often shared by Hospice teams with the families of those who are grieving a loved one who is nearing death.

‘Tis a Fearful Thing

‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.

One of the Five Remembrances that Buddhists contemplate during their meditation practices is this one:

I will be separated and parted from everyone and
everything that is dear to me

Anyone who lives long enough knows the pangs of sadness that come with loss. From the moment we are born and bond with our parents, grandparents and siblings; fall in love; marry; have children of our own—we are destined to endure the pain of losing someone we love—over and over again. My mother, at this point in her life, has had to say painful goodbyes to her husband, parents and 7 of her siblings, not to mention many close friends.

It’s enough to make you think that life is just an elaborate setup for suffering. But somehow we still manage to choose life. We choose to make friends, marry, bring new life into the world. We lose a spouse or partner and we decide to give our hearts to a new companion, opening ourselves up to more eventual sorrow. Are we in denial to think that death will not touch this new love too?

Why do conscious and highly intelligent beings make themselves vulnerable to the eventual pain and sorrow that comes with losing the one you love. Is love really something for fools? Is it not insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result?

What is it that makes us choose to invest in love and life? The poem teaches us that it all comes down to love – because it is ‘a holy thing to love.’ Love, life, death and love again is what it means to be human.

The poem’s closing words reflect a profound truth that speaks to the resilience of the human spirit and the best character traits of the human species:

It is a human thing, love
a holy thing, to love what death has touched.

Love survives death. Death destroys the body but it does not touch love—or erase love. The body is impermanent but Love is eternal. We somehow know at the deepest level that life is about love. It may be that our divine purpose is to love, no matter how painful the loss of a loved one will be, and to send that love out into the heavens.

We choose to deeply love someone because we believe and trust that it will always keep us connected. Love becomes the unbreakable tether between those of us “here” and those who have passed on. It is knowing this that enables us to overcome our fear of the certainty of death and separation.

To love deeply is holy. Holy. Love keeps us connected to the Creator of all Beings, to all of those we have loved and all those to come.  Even though my mother is sad when she thinks about all the loved ones in her life who death has touched, she still feels a holy connection with them which helps season her grief with painful joy and a spiritual component of hope that leads her to believe she will be reunited with them someday in the afterlife.

Let us embrace that love which is not severed by death. Painful, fearful, a thing for fools? Perhaps. Perhaps for some, at first. But it is also a holy thing… A holy thing to love.

“And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths”

An essay written by Susanna Schrobsdorff  and published in the January 22, 2018 edition of Time Magazine tells the story of two widows who found solace with one another despite the grief and sadness they felt over the loss of their spouses.

The two widows were Lucy Kalanithi, wife of Paul Kalanithi, and John Duberstein, husband of Nina Riggs. Both Paul and Nina published memoirs in 2016 (titled When Breath Becomes Air and The Bright Hour) – about the emotions they were experiencing while struggling to cope with their terminal illnesses.

The essayist described how the ache of loss runs concurrently with gratitude in the two complementary memoirs. The author of each book expresses a thankfulness for the love they have accumulated but at the same time describe the acute pain they feel at the thought of leaving it all behind. One emotion enables the other.

Edel Rodriguez for TIME

Susanna wondered how the two widows, Lucy and John, who became acquaintances and close friends throughout the process of publishing and promoting their partner’s memoirs after they passed away – and who are now planning for a future together, must feel as they tour together reading the words written by the two people they loved so profoundly.

“Perhaps their old lives seem woven into their new life, one love spilling into the next, families merging, past and present overlapping. All of it can exist almost simultaneously. The laws of time are so easily warped.”

A lot of people attempt to make a clean start when beginning a new relationship, trying to leave old baggage behind. They worry that holding on to the past will prevent them from living fully in the present or that it will hinder them from strengthening the emotional bonds of a new relationship.

I have learned from experience that leaving your bags behind is not really an option nor should we want it to be. My perspective is informed by the parallels my life has had with the story of this surviving couple.

My first wife suffered from Breast Cancer and passed away at the age of 45 leaving me and my two young daughters to mourn her loss. By good fortune and divine grace another woman came into my life, kind and loving, with three young children who was recovering from a different and maybe more traumatic kind of loss, the painful divorce and breakup of her family.

We met at a time when we were both hurting and vulnerable but we began to heal our emotional wounds gradually by consoling one another, by being generous and understanding, and by concentrating on things our partner needed instead of focusing on our own sorrows.

Rather than trying to erase the baggage from our past – and the more than two decades of loving memories spent raising our families that went along with it – we embraced it, weaving the lessons of our past lives into our new love and using our past experiences to form a stronger bond together.

Walt Whitman recognized that we are the product of everything that came before us when he wrote “And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths“. I am the person I am because of the people that came before me. They struggled and they prospered and they transferred their life’s lessons and blessings to the next generations so that we could benefit.

They are no longer here but a part of them lives in me and in you. “Death” is merely another word for former life—or, more precisely, another word for forms of life that have now sprung into endlessly transforming other forms of life.

What a shame it would be if we failed to propagate the beauty and sadness we have experienced during our past lives into our daily life. Doing so would make us less alive. Life is richer when we share the joy that we experienced from the past and we become more grateful for our blessings when we think back to the aches of sorrow we experienced in our past life.

While talking about mourning for her mother, my daughter once said to me that “Learning how to accept endings is an essential part of living“. There is much wisdom in that sentiment I think. We must accept endings as they are inevitable – death and life are an endless process, inseparable from each other. By taking the essence of those we have lost and making it an essential component of our daily living we honor best the lives of those who have passed on.

So if you are wise, you will take the accumulated baggage from your past, weave it seamlessly into the fabric of your present life and share it with others – so that when it comes time for you to leave, you will know that you contributed to growing new life.

In the spirit of the upcoming Holiday Season, I will close with a passage written by Paul Kalanithi, the dying father, who knowing that his eight month daughter would not remember him, wrote her this touching note to read someday in the future:

“When you come to one of the many moments in your life where you must give account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that doesn’t hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied.”

May your presence too always bring joy to the world and may those you love carry it forward with them to fertilize new life.

 

Fall always carries with it a touch of sadness

Autumn has always been my favorite season. There is something other-worldly about Fall in New England; some golden spell lingers over the brilliant colors, crisp air and falling leaves that penetrates my soul with its mysterious power. Unlike Spring, Summer, and Winter, which unfold year after year in similar fashion, each Fall season seems completely different and unique – a once in a lifetime experience for me to enjoy!

Being outdoors on a glorious Fall day, and seeing the explosion of colors wherever I turn, brings to mind the words from the hymn “Canticle of the Sun”:

“The heavens are telling the glory of God,
and all creation is shouting for joy…”

Just breathing the Fall air and marveling at the foliage seems to have a rejuvenating effect on me and makes me feel as if I was a 12 year old boy again – and seeing the world for the first time.

Fall is the harvest season, the time of the year when nature’s beauty is in full display; the time of year when I can put away my lawn mower and be glad to pick up a rake; a time when I can walk and run without being overcome by heat or insects; a time when I do not need my home heater or air conditioner.

Despite the magnificence of Fall it is also a season of melancholy for me. I have thought about the reasons for this:

• Fall is the season that most demonstrates the passage of time – it encourages us to think upon the swiftness with which our days are passing away.
• Strange as it seems, the source of the power behind the spectacular days of Autumn is the death and decay of the living – which carries an idea of sadness with it but also a lesson for us to consider about what beauty we can bring to the world when it comes time for us to decay and die.
• It signifies the start of shorter days and longer nights, the beginning of a dormant period for nature and reminds us that we too are part of a cycle of life that is beyond our control.
• It is a time for looking back. Fall days past, because of their brilliance, come easily to mind and take me back to memorable times spent with loved ones that I will never get back.

Let us embrace both the joy and sadness of Autumn – both emotions have served me well on my journey and have helped me to honor the past while appreciating the beauty of today. Blessed are we to witness the “year’s last loveliest smile…”

If you love, there will be sorrow…

Life is fragile and there will come a time for all of us when we experience seasons of loss. The REM song reminds us that “Everybody cries. Everybody hurts sometime“. The history of my painful losses include the death of my beloved Grandmother during a Christmas Eve house fire, the sudden fatal heart attack of my favorite Uncle and Godfather, the losing fight my wife and Mother of my two children fought against breast cancer and most recently the slow decline of my 87 year old father and best friend who suffers from COPD and has been placed in Hospice care.

During each of these losses I have suffered periods of profound sorrow. I loved them deeply and they were a major positive influence on helping me to become the person that I am today. I am who I am because of who they were, and because of the sacrifices they made on my behalf. They loved me first before I was able to fully love them. They supported me and cheered for my successes and taught me that losing can sometimes be more important than winning.

Love is not without cost. When we dare to love, we risk being hurt. Sorrow is the price we pay for choosing to love. I read somewhere once that the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference – a conscious effort not to invest any energy in growing the relationships we have with others.  We can decide not to fully love the people in our lives and to remain indifferent – insulating ourselves from the possibilities of getting hurt by them. This is the sentiment in the Simon & Garfunkel song I am a Rock in which they sing:

“…if I never loved I never would have cried – I am a rock, I am an island – and a rock feels no pain and an island never cries”

It’s true, if we love there will be sorrow and pain and sacrifice; but what is the alternative? To not love? To avoid tenderness? To miss out on the joy that comes from sharing life’s small and big moments with people you care about? To never understand what it means to be fully human?  That would be an alternative that would be a much greater loss.

So be grateful for those you love and those who love you, celebrate the time you have with them because it will not last forever, lean on them when your burdens become hard to bear and take solace during your seasons of sorrow knowing that the dead live on in the hearts of those who have loved them.