Comprehending The Circle of Life .......

From the moment of our birth the one and only certainty any of us has is that one day we shall die, and yet most of us spend very little time in contemplation about this absolute fact. Today my favorite Sunday morning program on CBS featured a number of segments whose only common thread was ‘death’ which of course started me thinking. In one form or another, death surrounds each of us every single day. On a purely superficial level we see it in the seasons as we all witness the lifespan of vegetation that is born in the spring, flourishes throughout the summer, and then begins to decline in autumn with one final burst of color before it succumbs to the inevitable frost that heralds the coming of winter. Begrudgingly we bear the cold and the death that surrounds us at every turn, knowing with the coming of spring we will once again witness renewal. However, in a much more profound and pronounced manner, we also experience it each time we lose someone we love, knowing their presence will no longer grace our lives moving forward, and such is the circle of life. Though some lifespans are as brief as the change of one season into the next, others will span decades before that final surrender.

When I was a very young adult and was forced to deal with death head on through the departure of a loved one such as my maternal grandmother, Myra, I was consoled by the fact that she was old and had been ill for quite some time, but as I sit here today I realize she died at the age of 66, an age I hope to see myself in just ten years, but then two and a half decades later, the impossible happened when my brother who loved life as much as anyone I’d ever known was killed along with one of his best friends in a horrific car accident two months to the day before his fiftieth birthday. It was at that time I decided I needed to come to terms with death as a means to tolerate my ongoing suffering.

I knew I didn’t want to become bitter nor even dare to question the higher form of wisdom contained within the Universe. I never asked ‘why’ but instead pondered the question ‘why not’ ….. why should death and the subsequent suffering touch other families and not my own? Who were we to think we should be immune? As a result, I read everything I could get my hands on that dealt with the subject of death and suffering, and the most moving thing came from the hand of a woman who had dealt with the ongoing fear of losing her beautiful, young daughter to anorexia. Almost ten years later, I still refer to her collection of poems, essays and scripture, along with her own thoughts and ponderings that she copied and bound together for my benefit.

Patricia Hesse dared to ask the question, “Why Should We Seek to See God’s Hand in Our Sufferings?”

"We experience what we believe. Each person looks at life though a different vision. Three men can look at a tree. One man will see so many board feet of valuable lumber worth so much money. The second man will see it as so much firewood to be burned, to keep his family warm in the winter. The third man will see it as a masterpiece of God’s creative art given to man as an expression of God’s love and enduring strength, with a value far beyond its worth in money or firewood."

"What we live for determines what we see in life and gives clear focus to our inner vision: We can respond to suffering by resisting and fight against it, however if God has engineered the problem we are fighting God; we can run from it and leave or abandon the difficult situation, however we may be running out on God; we can retreat into bitterness and become inwardly resentful, however we then become full of hate; or we can reap the rewards and look for God’s lessons as His blessings are infused into us within the pain."

As such, I came to the gradual understanding that by embracing suffering, I was also putting myself in touch with deeper, often hidden realities. For the kind of suffering incumbent within the permanent loss of someone you loved deeply annihilates any complacency you once held about reality and your ability to feel insulated from the pain and suffering you once believed only happened to others. Consequently you cannot help but experience life on an altogether different plane of existence as you finally grasp the impermanence of it all. Life is indeed fleeting, and at some point along the way, even for those of us who are gifted with a long life, it starts to speed up at such a rapid pace you cannot help but ask yourself, “Where did all the time go?”

It’s only through grasping the fact that at best our lives are a temporal existence that we become free to become more alive by getting in touch we our emotions as we begin to feel more deeply, love more profoundly, touch others by sharing in the generosity of the human spirit and experience the world at large in a manner we might have otherwise avoided. This is why it is often stated, “Suffering is the first grace.”

It’s only by coming to the understanding that life is a gift do we begin to enjoy it on the level that was originally intended. As illogical as it may sound, I see my suffering as the greatest gift my brother ever gave me when he departed this life. Without it I would have never grown in the ways that began to make my life feel complete, and I would have continued to struggle with my own value as it pertained to others. I would have never connected with my faith in a way that gave me a deeper awareness of the workings of the Universe and its collective consciousness, nor grasped the concept behind ‘being there’ for others as indeed the greatest gift you can give to yourself. Instead I would have continued fighting my own personal battles while struggling to lay blame on anyone but myself for my sad condition.

Each life – no matter how long or short – is complete at its end, thus the circle of life has joined beginning to end in a manner that shall always remain a mystery until we have all the answers. While one person dies, another is born and so it goes as the world continues to repopulate itself with souls on a mission to discover the excellence of being. So in absence of absolute knowledge, perhaps it is the journey and not the destination that should remain at our mind’s forefront as our primary focus, as the end will come for all of us at one time or another, and when it does only our deeds will remain in our stead. Until then I know that God’s love is shown in me and through me, thus I try never to waste an opportunity to show that love to others.