Embracing Life After Loss. Allen Klein

Big Picture

      The next time you are feeling bored, despondent or irritable, try to remember your cosmic situation; at this moment you are riding on a big round-shaped rock that is hurling through space, spinning around its own axis at about a thousand miles per hour and spinning around the sun at approximately 66,000 miles per hour. Along with our entire solar system, you are also soaring through the Milky Way galaxy at nearly 500,000 miles per hour. And what’s truly remarkable is that you don’t even have to hold on.

      —Wes “Scoop” Nisker, Buddhist teacher

      I recently went to the planetarium in San Francisco. I saw an incredible astronomical show about the creation of our sun. I learned that the sun is actually a star and that it is the nearest star to earth. I also learned that it was created 4.6 billion years ago. And it will burn itself out in another five billion years.

      Fascinating numbers, but I could not wrap my mind around them. They were talking about billions of years ago and billions of years into the future. I couldn’t even imagine what one million years would look like, let alone billions.

      It made me realize what a small speck we are in the history of our vast universe. And how trivial some of the things we concern ourselves about really are. It also helped put my losses, which seem so overwhelming at the time, in perspective.

      You may feel that your loss is the largest thing in the universe. In time, and with perspective, your loss will take its proper place in your life.

      Triumphing Over Tragedy

      The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.

      —John Vance Cheney, American poet

      Life can be filled with joy. It can also be filled with immense sadness. Our ups and downs during life’s journey depend on a number of factors. These include such things as our circumstances, our reactions to our circumstances, and yes, even luck. Often we can’t control our circumstances, or our luck, but we can control our reactions to what happens to us and, by doing so, overcome them.

      There have been numerous books, articles, and movies about people who have risen above the difficulties that life has handed them. They have won gold medals running races with no legs, they have gone from the bottom of the heap to the top of the boardroom, and they have been devastated by the loss of a loved one. Many of them have gone on to inspire others or create organizations—like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers—to fight against the injustice that caused their loss. They have all triumphed over tragedy.

      These are no superheroes. These are ordinary people who realized that they might be down, but they didn’t have to stay there. They too have had feel-like-crying moments, perhaps many of them. But they didn’t let those times dictate their future. They eventually took those setbacks and, at some point, realized that they could surmount them.

      If those people can do it, you can too.

      Endings Are Also Beginnings

      The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.

      —Ivy Baker Priest, American politician