IT’S NOT EASY TO SAY GOODBYE

I’ve never found it easy to say goodbye. Even when I have to, I always feel that whatever has put this person into my life, they have been there for a reason. Trying to understand and learn from them is therefore important for someone who thinks as I do.

Yesterday, feeling I had been neglecting my ‘musical’ friends, I and dozens of people I know turned up at a club we have been going to for many, many years for the matinee performance of our friend’s group.

We all remarked on how many of us were there yesterday all of a sudden. It is a long weekend and the weather is fabulous, but sometimes I think we all feel a need to reconnect at the same time as well.

In meeting again though, we catch up and sometimes get a shock at the same time as we do.

Not one, but two of my friends had died earlier this year. Speaking with their Widows is like reliving my own time in that traumatic first year after. I know what they are going through and they know I know. It is like a club, an association, that no one wants to be part of, but which life has put us in.

I give advice, but only to tell them to acknowledge and accept that this first year is rotten. I warn them not to change things much the first year, because you don’t realize that you are a ‘zombie’. You will see it later. You will also deeply regret the many changes you made when you took the ‘helpful advice’ of those around you.

In one case, what a loss there is after a 62 year marriage. The amount of time you were together isn’t the main thing though, it is the history and connection that was your life that you feel the most. You were part of a pair, a couple, two of you; now you are just you yourself. Somehow you have to deal with this.

One time a friend suffering through the ‘mourning’ of Divorce, compared it to that of Widowhood. But, no it’s a different thing. I realized that the difference was that: Divorced you hope you will never see the other person ever again; Widowed you would give anything/everything you have to spend  even a minute with them again.

No matter how much you would love to feel they are with you, they aren’t, and won’t be again in this life.

However long it has been, every memory is a tiny stab in your heart. It’s only the scar tissue getting thicker over time which lets it feel less like a direct hit than it was.

My last advice snippet is always the most important. Allow yourself to mourn. You have a right to do this. It is the time to do this. Do not stop yourself. You need to express what you feel. If others are there and you can/want to talk, this is the time. Your loss however, is so profound that it make take a while to say what you really feel, if you ever can or want to.

Mourn as long as you have to or want to. Never mind what someone else says or feels. They are having their own experience. It is not yours.

You will say your goodbye when you can and realize one day that you were singing one morning. You have come out on the other side. You are surprised but you’re still here and ready to move forward at last.  

REPACKING IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA

Turn around and look behind you. Now turn around again and look ahead. Now decide which way you want to go. It’s that simple. It’s that hard.

Because you don’t know what might be ahead of you, it might sometimes seem a bit scary to go forward. Meanwhile, you already know what is behind you.

You also know that what is behind you isn’t going to change or improve, it is what it is, or rather, was.

It’s likely that there are new challenges, experiences and opportunities available whenever you start moving forward. To take advantage of them however, you need to make room for them in your life.

Most of us need to work on putting the past behind us, if we ever want to get some distance from it. It usually doesn’t go away from us by itself. Each of us seems to carry a lot of it around with us.

In fact, most of us don’t put enough of it behind us, but instead seem determined to carry it around with us everywhere we go. 

We definitely can’t walk away from the past if we insist on carrying it around with us.

  

It can be pretty heavy, but most of us probably don’t notice that too much because we’ve been carrying the same weight around for a long time.

We can let ourselves put it down for a while. Only after we put it down are we able to see how heavy it was.

However, if you pick it up again as you leave, you are still going to be carrying around whatever you’ve accumulated. You might notice, however, that it’s a lot heavier than you realized it was.

Nevertheless, just by putting it down you may have started to put some distance between yourself and the past.

At some point you might think about what you have been waiting for all of this time. Knowing this can help you decide that you are ready to move forward again, or even just start off in another direction.

When you are ready, it is always a good idea to consider how much your baggage weighs. Immediately after this I suggest you repack it.

  

You can start by dumping everything out in front of you where you can see all of it.

I can guarantee that you won’t be putting all of it back into your luggage. However, you need to look at it to see that this is true.

Almost immediately you will realize how many things you were thinking about bringing along with you. There is usually quite a lot more than you thought. No wonder it felt so heavy when you picked it up again.

You will realize that you probably haven’t used some, maybe even most of these things recently. Nevertheless you have been carrying them around with you for ages.

You will quickly realize that a lot of it is stuff which you threw into your baggage out of habit. In fact, some of it has been there for such a long time that you forgot you had it with you. You think that maybe you could leave some of it behind, or maybe even throw some of it out. You figure out that you probably wouldn’t miss it.

If you aren’t ready to take anything away at first, you might consider the things that you actually have used recently and perhaps put them aside to repack.

Next, consider that every item which you bring with you, whether you ever use it or not, adds to the weight you will have to carry everywhere you go.

You will now have become aware of how much you had been carrying around with you. You will also have noticed how much lighter it feels now that you took out some of the old or unused things.

  

Perhaps, because of this, you will replace some things. You could bring something else which might be more useful than all of that old, worn out stuff, you used to carry around with you.

  

Repacking is always a good idea. Do it often. You will be lightening your baggage and making the load you carry around with you easier to manage. You will also be leaving some room for some new things you have made some space for in your life.

CHANGE BEGINS WITHIN

I am a great believer in fresh starts. A new year, a new month, a new week; sometimes even a new day, can call for a resolution or plan to get going on some project or plan which we have delayed until now.

In the hope of reviving and remotivating ourselves, most of us try and changes things around from time to time. To feel a real sense of progress however, it is probably more important, to act on making the changes we are willing and ready to make within ourselves.

I wonder why so many of us, treat ourselves with so little respect? Whether it’s our health we are neglecting or some dream that we are always putting away; many of us take better care of the needs of strangers and our pets, than we do ourselves. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of us actually take better care of almost anyone else than we do of ourselves.

In fact, I suspect that many of us have probably done more in our lives to learn how to get along better with others, than we have in learning how to get along with ourselves.

It is probably part of the human condition that, each of us wants to belong somewhere, to feel we are part of the life around us. Unfortunately, sometimes we accept someone else's, perhaps even a stranger’s opinion as more important than our own?

I believe that sooner or later, each of us needs to decide how much we are going to continue letting those around us effect our lives going forward. Having decided this we take steps to bring more of what we need and want into our lives.

I suspect most of us secretly hope that, someday soon, some magic will bring us the life and the things we feel we need to make us happy. The problem is, that in the present, most of us, still aren’t living the lives we would really like to be living. Worse still, we secretly wonder if we ever will. It would probably do us more good, when we are daydreaming to dream up which small steps we might take to decrease the gap between who we actually are and who we would have liked to have been.

I also think that each of us, at some point in our lives, needs to think about what kind of person we feel we are. I am convinced that most of us would like to feel, and probably would like to believe, that we are good people.

Then again, how good can we be when most of us can’t admit the truth about our weak points and shortcomings to ourselves? How does being a good person jive with living a life which still has episodes of bitterness, envy, anger, temper tantrums and road rage? I’d love to know. While, none of us is perfect, some things could use our attention and we know it.

Like me, you may have deliberately left Type A people behind you a long time ago. Most of us wonder how anyone could be happy if they knew that everyone around them finds them tiring, and tiresome, to be around. Who could be impressed by someone who seems inexplicably to need to ride over other people as they bulldoze their way through life? What’s eating them and how insecure can such a person possibly be?

Meanwhile, however, why don’t more of us ask the demanding and obnoxious, the self-centered and rude to be responsible and explain themselves? Why instead do we meekly step out of their way and thereby permit their rude, crude and ignorant behaviour to continue?

If we’re such good people, why do we still sometimes envy others? Why do we demand so much attention? Why do many of us appear to be so angry about everything and at everyone around us? What are we trying to prove? And probably more importantly, who are we trying to prove it to?

The big question for each of us to ask ourselves, in whatever area of our lives which needs improvement might be, ‘What is it going to take for you to stop running on all cylinders 24/7?’ We might also ask ourselves, ‘Why are you and I still doing this to ourselves?’ While these and other questions will put each of us on the spot, being honest means recognizing that none of us is exempt from the need to do better in one area of our lives or another.

Most of us understand and accept that our lives are, and will always be, a work in progress. This may not be a bad thing.

Luckily, most of the time, we usually are only accountable to ourselves. In fact, none of us must change anything, unless we actually want to have a better life and become the person we always wanted to be, when we grew up.