What We’re Taught

We’re taught how to acquire things, not what to do when we lose them.

Read the above statement out loud and let it sink in a moment.

Have you lived on cloud 9, where nothing could possibly go wrong, and all was right with the world – until one day it wasn’t?

We are conditioned to learn how to acquire things: knowledge, experience, careers, material possessions, wealth, dates, etc.. However, where in our educational system and life experience are we taught what to do when we lose those things?

You know the answer to that question as well as I do.

Now that you realize this as a simple truth, you can’t un-know it.

So – as this applies to you in your life, what are you going to do about it?

Continue striving to acquire more things (refer back to my previous post titled Bury and Replace) or work through the muck to find the reason why enough is never enough?

Explore why you feel you’re not enough for yourself and for others. Examine why your persistence to acquire more knowledge is never enough (none of it matters anyway unless you do something with it). Consider why it takes losing it all to make us wake up to what’s really important.

Grief is funny like that. It’s the unsuspecting culprit of ongoing suffering in our lives. There is a reason why a good number of lottery winners end up worse off than before they won the lottery. The money is like a band-aid on old wounds, only the band-aids bleed through – eventually. What do you think happens after the lottery winnings are all gone and the person ends up bankrupt? Add that grief on to all the others that came before it.

Society doesn’t consider all the ways adults and children alike grieve. It’s a mistake to believe children don’t grieve when their parents divorce. It’s a mistake to believe children/adults/elderly don’t grieve when their beloved pet dies. It’s also a mistake to believe people who are homeless don’t also grieve.

Consider all these ways people grieve and my oh my are we a sad population – busy being busy, striving to bury and replace, and masking it all with “I’m fine.”

So, what do we do about it?

We confront and process our grief so we can recover from it. It’s never too early and never too late. We become examples for our children in healthy ways to communicate, express, and process grief. And the majority of us don’t know how to do that. But every day that passes is a decision to tolerate grief taking the wheel in our lives.

My suggestion is to find someone who has walked the path of recovery to guide you. Seek out support groups for parents of grieving children. Seek out reading materials to help you process your grief. Keeping in mind, although getting together with others grieving can be helpful in the short-term, rarely, does this singular approach yield long-term results and recovery.

The first step above all else, my friend, is choosing. And every day you continue to bury and replace, you’re making a choice. As a result, your future happiness is paying the price.

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