Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life & Living

by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

We often look to others to define us. If others are in a bad mood, we are brought down. If others see us as being wrong, we become defensive. But who we are is beyond attack and defense. We are whole, complete, and of worth just as we are, whether we are rich or poor, old or young, receiving an Olympic gold medal, or beginning or ending a relationship. Whether at the beginning or the end of life, at the height of fame or in the depths of despair,

You are what you are, not your disease, not what you do. Life is about being, not doing.

“If I’m not those things, then who am I?” If you’re no longer the nice guy at the office, the selfish uncle, the helpful neighbor, who are you? Discovering and being authentic to ourselves, finding out what we want to do and do not want to do—we do this by being committed to our own experiences.

Once in a while, give in to an urge you would usually suppress, try doing something “odd” or new. You may learn something about who you are.

If you could do anything you wanted, without consequences, what would it be? Your answer to that question reveals a lot about who you are, or at least what is in your way. Your answer may point to a negative belief about yourself, or a lesson to work on before you can discover your essence.

If you say you would love someone whom you are not loving now, you may fear love.

What would you do if your parents, society, boss, teacher, weren’t around? How would you define yourself? Who is under all that stuff? That’s the real you.

We’re not all geniuses like Einstein or great athletes like Michael Jordan, but “chipping away the excess” will allow us all to be brilliant in one way or another, depending on our own gifts.

Who you are is the purest of love, the grandest kind of perfection. You are here to heal yourself and to remember who you have always been. It is your guiding light in the darkness.

The grandest kind of perfection of who we are includes being honest about our dark sides, our imperfections. We find comfort when we know who someone else is. And it is just as important that we learn the truth about ourselves, the truth about who we are.

We are like a pie: we give a piece to our parents, we give a piece to our loves, we give a piece to our children, and we give a piece to our careers. At the end of life, some people have not saved a piece for themselves—and don’t even know what kind of pie they were. I know what kind of pie I am; this is something we each find for ourselves. I can leave this life knowing who I am.’

In a world of illusions, a world of dreams and emptiness, love is the source of truth.

Inevitably, these expectations and conditions are not met, and the details of real life become the thread that creates a nightmare.

We find ourselves in loveless friendships and relationships. We wake from our romantic illusions to a world that lacks the love we had hoped for as children. Now taking an adult view of love, we see it all clearly, realistically, and bitterly.

We can only find peace and happiness in love when we release the conditions we place on our love for each other.

And we usually place the toughest conditions on those we love the most.

One of the greatest obstacles to giving unconditional love is our fear that the love may not be returned. We don’t realize that the feeling we seek lies in the giving, not in the receiving.

Not because we really were, but because the act of measuring is not an act of love.

When you feel unloved, it is not because you are not receiving love; it is because you are withholding love.

We must try to see love in the big

picture, not in a detail. A detail such as a single phone call can be a distraction from real love. This woman’s story is an example of how the rules, the games, and the measurements interfere with our expression of love for one another. It’s a hard lesson to learn.

The truth is, we betray one another by not freely giving our smiles, our understanding, our love.

There are dreams of love, life, and adventure in all of us. But we are also sadly filled with reasons why we shouldn’t try. These reasons

seem to protect us, but in truth they imprison us. They hold life at a distance. Life will be over sooner than we think. If we have bikes to ride and people to love, now is the time.

Love has to come from within, if it is to come at all. And I’m still not there.

Do you nurture your soul, do you feed it? What activities do you do that make you feel better about yourself, that you’re really glad to have done? When we love ourselves, we fill our lives with activities that put smiles on our faces. These are the things that make our hearts and our souls sing. They are not always the “good things” we were taught we should do—they’re things we do just for ourselves. Nurturing yourself may be sleeping in late on Saturday instead of getting up and being “productive.” And nurturing ourselves is letting the love that is all around us in.

Let’s practice being as kind to and forgiving of ourselves as we are to others.

The more love I gave, the more love I felt. The more love I felt, the easier it became to love myself. I’ve become closer than ever to my friends, I met some wonderful new people. I became a happier person, someone you would want to meet. I was no longer that desperate, searching person. I experienced love every day.”

“What if love wasn’t making a woman happy? What if, instead, we defined love as being there? We know we really can’t make someone else happy all the time. What if your gauge was off, what if simply being there really made them happy, in the long run?”

Life has its up and downs. We can’t solve all of our loved ones’ problems, but we can usually be there for someone. Isn’t that, over the years, the strongest sign of love?

love is being there, and caring.

We will have many relationships in our lifetimes. Some—spouses, significant others, friends—we choose, while others, such as parents and siblings, are chosen for us.

Relationships offer us the biggest opportunities for learning lessons in life, for discovering who we are, what we fear, where our power comes from, and the meaning of true love.

The lesson is that we don’t always recognize love because we categorize it, declaring romantic love to be the only “real” kind. So many relationships, so much love all around us. We should all be so lucky to live and die with the kind of love that Hillary was surrounded

There’s no such thing as an insignificant or accidental relationship. Every meeting, encounter, or exchange, with everyone from a spouse to an anonymous telephone operator, no matter how brief or profound, how positive, neutral, or painful, is meaningful.

And in the grand scheme of things, every relationship is potentially important, for even the most trivial encounter with a passing stranger can teach us a great deal about ourselves. Every person we encounter holds the possibility of sending us to happiness, to ...

They all have the possibility of bringing us great love and great relationships where we ...

Relationships cannot and will not fix us; it’s fairy-tale thinking to believe so. Yet, it’s no surprise that many of us engage in fairy-tale thinking.

Fairy-tale thinking is magical, fun, and has its place. But too much lets us off the hook, relieving us of the responsibility of making ourselves happier or better, of handling problems with our careers or families, of dealing with all the other problems of life.

if your own boat doesn’t float, no one will want to sail across the ocean with you.

If you are looking for love, remember that a teacher will appear when you are ready for the lesson.

Whether you’re married or not, if you want more romance in your life, fall in love with the life you have.

People in intimate relationships usually have the same issues, but in reverse.

Like attracts like, in an “opposite” way.

Someone once explained the phenomenon this way: “In any relationship one person makes pancakes, the other one eats them.”

If we ask the universe to make us more loving, it may not send loving people to us that day. Instead, it may bring hard-to-love people into our lives.

Frustrating as these people are, they may be just the ones we need—the “wrong” people can often be our greatest teachers.

Our happiness does not rely on relationships changing for the “better.” The truth is that we can’t change other people, and we’re not supposed to.

Our relationships are not “broken.” And that the other people are not being what we want them to be doesn’t mean that they are “broken.” All relationships are reciprocal, meaning that we mirror our relationship partners. Since like attracts like, we attract what’s inside of us.

Neither is it ever about making the other person better—it’s always about you. You create your own destiny.