Saturday, April 20, 2013

Of Grief and Gratitude

Today I am preparing for both a celebration of life service and a wedding. Both are very special moments to be honoured and celebrated and both mark important transitions in life.

We go through many transitions in a lifetime. It starts with when we leave the warmth and safety of our mother's womb; then some of us experience pretty major change when younger siblings are born. From there we leave the home and go on to that adventure called school. Then we hit puberty and our lives are turned upside down for a few years while our bodies undergo some pretty drastic changes. Then we leave home (usually) and either live on our own or get into committed relationships and some have children of their own and get to go through all the transitions with them too.

Today most of us go through several job changes and often a number of career changes before retiring. Then there is the transition of retirement and all that entails. And finally there is death. Sometimes death shows up to disrupt all those other transitions as well. As neatly as this all seems to be laid out here life is usually kind of messy and can be quite chaotic. Some transitions are more joyful and some more painful but there are elements of both pain and joy in most transitions. We are sad to be leaving what we know, excited and oft times fearful of entering into the unknown. And the truth is everything before us is truly unknown because our neat little lives can be disrupted at any time.

Making peace with the past as well as with the unknown future can be very helpful as we make our various transitions. We need to grieve what was more often than we realize because it is important to honour the losses of life. It is also important to get in touch with and express our gratitude for the gains in our lives so that we can truly appreciate the wonders that are unfolding. There is actually a full range of feelings between grief and gratitude that mark our passages along life's journey. Why not honour all of them and allow ourselves to go with the flow of this amazing experience we call life?

Namaste

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