"A hill is a transitional accommodation to stress, and ego may be a similar accommodation. A waterfall is a self correcting maladjustment of stream to structure,
and so, for all I know is technique."
I have just finished reading a great book by the author Joan Didion. In that book she chronicles the pain and incomprehension of her forty year marriage that ended abruptly one evening at the dinner table when her husband and fellow author John Gregory Dunn suffered a massive coronary and passed away.
Didion is a master of creating a feeling of intimacy with her words; kind of like she was one of your more intelligent friends that you wish you had always spent more time with.
She talks about the multiple layers of grief and the process by which people seem to be immobilized and start living in a separate reality in order to cope with the loss.
She also has a very visual sense of the world, and an amazing recall of her past and the different cities and experiences that she has lived and loved through.
Finally she touches on the strange custom in the west to frown upon people who grieve for too long. In these cases, it is almost thought of as a serious and embarrassing mental disorder.
She went through alot of pain....her only daughter Quintana died two years later after a series of illnesses. Her knew book "Blue Nights" deals with her relationship with her daughter and her realizations of her own mortality.
To me this book was a refreshing change from my usual readings of Spiritual technologies and my usual face plant infront of my Tennis events on the tube or the computer.
What comes to mind immediately after losing my Grandmother last year....is that although you know that there is an expiry date on all of the loved ones that frequent our lives....you just don't really want to face it. It's honest, true, and depressing, and a little bit too much to deal with on a day to day basis. So better to bury the feelings.
What struck me as being fatally romantic were the moments that Didion described of not knowing what to do when she had some wonderful news to share with her husband, or just some interesting news. She was so used to bouncing her ideas of her best friend and confidant....she wasn't sure how to process the world alone, without the love of her life.
On the positive side, I don't want this writing to become completely morbid. Didion is an icon. She is a brave winner and a survivor that has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to take a more honest and real look at their feelings and their pain, without attatching guilt and shame to the process.
I have had a few near death experiences in my life...and I inevitably try to scramble for some sort of contribution that I have made in this world. Something that would make it a little more palatable and a little less terrifying to just pass on.
I would be very happy, to live out my remaining years with a wonderful partner, in a quiet neighbourhood somewhere, writing books from my heart (if I had the talent) that actually spoke volumes to people. Don't we all want to make some sort of impact in the end?
Its probably worthwhile to note that I am not sure what the criteria is for making a positive impact in this lifetime. It may be as simple as being a positive person and smiling to strangers, being a good friend.... or it may be as complex as your negative words and actions reverberating through paths of energies that are changed by our own judgements and the butterfly effect.
In the meantime, I feel healthy and happy, living here in 2012. Bring it on. Getting older is completely surreal, but it can be a tremendous experience. Or at least, that is something to shoot for.
Rick
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