Learning From the Truths of Another + Prologue

I guess I should have posted this part before the bulleted points for it to make more sense. Please remember these are not my words. Though some of what this woman wrote did resonate with me.

In 2004 my beloved daughter Jesse died four days before her tenth birthday. Within nine months my precious son Cory was hospitalized following a near-fatal breakdown triggered by Jesse’s death. While no one is ever prepared for the death or serious illness of a child, I’ve realized in the last three years that, ironically, surviving the AIDS epidemic made my grief slightly easier to bear. For one thing, I had already survived the shock of seeing young, beautiful people whom I loved struck down out of the blue, dying before they even had a chance to savor life, for absolutely no good reason. I had long ago given up the illusion that life is fair, just, benevolent, predictable, or controllable.

And a year and a half ago I adopted two sisters, now aged twelve and eight, who had survived six years of neglect, starvation, and physical and emotional abuse after being abandoned to an institution in Guatemala. Cory is thriving, and with Alejandra and Diana and a ‘village’ of created family and friends, we’ve worked to reconstitute a new family. My experiences of the last three years have propelled me to concentrate on the mysteries of trauma and loss and how one recovers from these things, and both my own practice and IPG have benefited from this focus.

And while ‘happy’ is not a term I’d necessarily ever use to describe myself anymore, ‘wiser’ certainly is. This is what I know:


• Life is manifestly unfair. No amount of good behavior will buy you safety or happiness. No one here gets out alive. The Buddha was right: all human life involves suffering. The Bible is right: life is a ‘vale of tears.’

• Nothing important is under your control. Most of your life is determined at the moment of conception – your race, gender, nationality, family and social class of origin, and a multitude of biological characteristics, including a lot of your mental health. Much of the rest is determined by history, current events, or chance.

• A lot of what you believe to be under your control – your behavior, for example – is actually dictated by your unconscious mind. Every day, neuroscience discoveries point out the illusion of free will and free choice.

• Nevertheless, we have an imperative to act as if we have choices and personal control. It’s the only hope we have.

• There is most definitely not, as the platitude goes, a ‘reason for everything,’ at least not a good one, and everything does NOT work out for the best.

• But even though bad things happen to good people for no good reason – if you’re fortunate, you can create something meaningful from chaos and suffering. Furthermore, it is our responsibility to try.

• Most of us reading this newsletter – including me – are the ‘lucky ones.’ Every time I look at Ale and Diana and think of the lives they led, I remember that the majority of the people on our planet struggle daily merely to stay alive.

• Life is more complex than we can comprehend, and yet simpler than we think. In the words of Aldous Huxley: "It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human condition all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than this: try to be a little kinder."


Or, as the Grateful Dead sang: "...What I want to know is: Are you kind?"

Peace
Margie Nichols

Comments

Bollocks - don't believe a word of it.

The greatest gift we have is free will. Believing it is 'not your fault'* is a cheap way out of taking responsibility for your own failures. Sure, the circumstances of my birth and my genes have a lot to do with who I am and where I am at - both of those things were shaped by the free choices of my antecedents - just as my free choices shape the future of my descendants. I also can point to a myriad of decisions in my life that would have lead me along very different paths.

So bollocks to determinism! And bollocks to try, too. Do or do not. There is no try! :wink:

* Obviously that "you", and indeed this entire post, is generic and not aimed specifically at you, NJ
 
Yes, I am kind.

That is the reason I behave as I do.

The things you mentioned carried a tone of hopelessness in them. While there are impossible situations in life. I still believe while there is life there is some kind of hope and some kind of answers depending upon our willingness to surrender and accept them when life brings them into fore front of our consciousness.

As MB said "Do or do not. There is no try!" If you believe in something greater that circumstance and situation, things come.

There is more at work in life than mere coincidence and hopeless situations.

I believe you understand this as well.

Love u NJ
 
The only missing element is the fact that WITHOUT chaos and suffering you can not create any meaning from life.

We only understand a thing in contrast to another thing.

Think you have it tough? Spend a year in Rwanda... in Bangladesh... in Calcutta.

That will re-calibrate your sense of what tough is and you will find you appreciate life a lot more.


Without the contrast of darkness we could not know light.
Without the contrast of sorrow we could not know joy.

And even your worst day is far better than the yawning chasm of non-being that awaits.


You only have this short time to FEEL.

A good cry is as delicious, as precious, as profound as a hearty laugh.
 
I"d like to hear what Margie has to say in a few years time, i think its writings of a person trying to make some sense in what they have had to deal with in their life so far, Very ecclesiastical really.
 
As an determinist I agree 100% with that . Free will doesn't exist . Is only an ilussion . Our lives are shaped by many factors that we don't control.
 

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