Tag: life and death

Another Word For It

“People may call what happens at midlife “a crisis”, but it’s not. It’s an unravelling- a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you’re “supposed” to live. The unravelling is a time when you are challenged by the universe to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and to embrace who you are.” – Brené Brown

I believe that I truly started “unravelling” when I turned 40 and the Great Recession started the ball rolling for me, in a big way. Unravelling can be painful, but it can also be so liberating. And it’s funny, we sometimes smugly think that we get to a point of being completely “unravelled”, but then we realize that we still get all tangled and tied up in knots, reminding us that we still have a long ways to go.

Our middle son is in medical school, and we were Facetiming with him last night. He is currently working and learning in the Crisis Trauma Unit in a major hospital in a major city in our country. He has seen and witnessed more in a few weeks than I hope to ever experience in my lifetime. (Those of you who are in the medical arts, thank you for heeding your calling. Thank you for putting your incredible talents towards the healing of others. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.) I asked our son last night if anything really unnerved him the most about his experience. Was there anything that really gave him pause, more than anything else that he had experienced? He told me that it was surreal to see a patient die who had been all “done up” for the day. Their makeup was in place, and their nails were freshly done. It struck him deeply that they had no idea that this would be their last day alive on Earth.

Maybe we are all just balls of yarn, unravelling. We will unravel until we come to the end of our own line of string. Our string gets intertwined and tangled up with others, throughout the days of our own unravelling, making patterns and connections, and then sometimes it rolls on, in a line, all by itself. We have no idea when or where our own ball of string ends, so we may as well enjoy our own unravelling. We may as well get all made up, get a manicure, and roll on with our days with purpose and curiosity and gusto, until one day, much to our own surprise, we reach the end of our string. We are completely unravelled. We are no longer twisted in knots. Our own unique line has been added to the blanket of Life. And we are free.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2319. Do you prefer vertical or horizontal stripes?

Be Alive

In the last six months, our extended family has had not one, but two individual members, who by all current statistics, medical scientific knowledge, and highly regarded doctors’ opinions should be dead, but they are not. They both are alive, and thriving at home, and making future plans. One of these family members was told that she 100 percent had three days to live, by a highly regarded doctor, in a highly regarded ICU, in a major city in our country. I imagine that this doctor’s practice, and “certainty” about anything, has now changed forever.

I won’t go into too much detail. These are not my stories to tell. I am just a witness to their miracles. I honor and respect my loved ones’ privacy. I also empathize with, and I understand that not everyone’s loved ones get that “miracle”, and it is painful to try to understand the “whys” of this fact. The bottom line of it is, I don’t think that the certain “whys” of anything will ever be fully understood while we are still living human lives on Earth. We can drive ourselves crazy with “the whys”, or we can just live.

The reason why I bring these experiences which I have breathlessly witnessed to the blog, is to remind everyone that when there is life, there is hope. Science is not full-proof. Science “advances” all of the time, with new knowledge, new technology and new data. When you are alive, be “alive.” Be alive. Be in the moment, fully experiencing every sensation, every feeling, every thought that you are capable of undergoing, in each precious moment of your life. While you are alive, there is a reason why you are alive. Know this.

Some tortoises live up to 150 years. Most butterflies live for 15-29 days. Are tortoises more important than butterflies to our ecology? Have you ever read The Butterfly Effect by Andy Andrews? It starts out describing The Scientific Law of Sensitive Dependence Upon Initial Conditions. This law of physics proves that in certain circumstances, the seemingly inconsequential instance of a single butterfly’s flap of wings, could set molecules in motion, that could cause other molecules to go into motion, on and on down the line, which could ultimately cause a major storm, and even a hurricane, on the other side of Earth. Every single life makes a difference. Every single life matters. The length of anyone’s or anything’s life is not important. While alive, every life makes a difference and an impact on this co-creation, which we are all living in, and working on together.

I read an article recently that stated that “exceptional” people are extremely rare. These are the historical and current figures that most of us have “an inkling” about, and at the very least, have heard their names. Very few of the “exceptional people” in our own generation, will be remembered in a few generations to come. It is not important to be exceptional. It is important to be fully “you” when you are alive. You play a unique part in this tapestry of life that no other person or thing can play or do. In that regard, we are all exceptional. What you do when you are alive, moves molecules of energy that can cause major events on the other side of the world. What you do when you are alive, certainly impacts everyone and everything that you have been in contact with, in every instance of your life, and these impacts have an exponential effect that anyone can see, even with rudimentary mathematical and statistical understanding.

The other night, my husband and I watched just one episode of Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” documentary series on Netflix. The episode we watched featured cancer patients and patients with mental illnesses such as depression and OCD, receive carefully measured psilocybin doses, in a safe, clinical setting. Every single person interviewed, described this experience of taking the psychedelic psilocybin (derived from mushrooms), as phenomenally comforting. Each patient had a unique experience, but the unifying theme seemed to be the melting away of the individual self, and the realization that we are all part of the same beautiful energy.

We have the choice to believe that we’ll just fold into this great energy of love and light when we die, or we can choose to believe that we are currently part of that same energy here on Earth, just in a different form, for the fun of experiencing co-creation in a tactile, sensory form. Of course, we don’t have to believe any of this. We all have our own beliefs about the afterlife, and no one who is currently alive really knows what happens after we die. So for now, our mission is to be in the now, and to live. Our mission is to Be Alive, in the one and the only exceptional life that we are currently experiencing, in our own unique human form.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.