Everything and everyone changes over time. You can deny this, fight it, try to ignore it or learn from it.
Here’s what can be learned about changes in terms of your life. Time resembles a river. You can’t step into it in the same place twice due to its flow, as the Greek philosopher Hericlitus said. You can’t go backward, nor can you move into a future that has yet to emerge. All you can do is learn from the past and imagine what kind of future you want to live in — and then walk in that direction, understanding you will encounter many obstacles in the process.
Along the way, losses are part of the human experience. Everyone has lost someone or something — a relationship, job or other life transition such as relocating or starting a new school year. It is strange but true how any loss strikes, first like a big wave threatening to engulf us but over time feeling more like a small wave.
I remember how difficult it was to lose each parent, the shock of realizing they were gone. It took time for me to understand that while they were no longer present physically, they remained in my memories. Each time I walked down a street and someone ahead of me was smoking a cigar, I remembered my father sitting in a living room chair reading a book and smoking a cigar. And I recalled my mother each time I wrote a story about how she memorized stories and told them over long train rides to visit my grandparents in Colorado.
I’ve found that how people deal with losses follows familiar patterns. Some avoid the pain by burying their feelings or disguising them in frenetic activities or still worse attempts to deaden the pain. While these may work in the short run, they won’t in the long run.
As I faced my own losses, a wise friend gave me advice that at the time I didn’t want to hear: “There’s no way through but through,” words that sounded as if they’d be printed in a greeting card. Later I understood he was right — it just took me time to realize it.
Reportedly Socrates summed up the wisdom he taught others in two words — practice dying. This guidance showed philosophy as therapy — learning how to think clearly and live well. The Socratic method is therapeutic even if sometimes frustrating to those who deal with it. Socrates would probe any statement with a question but then continue with more questions until the person questioned ran out of answers and had to confront the truth.
I know that sounds somewhat morbid, but if you think about your life you can identify losses as being benchmarks in your book of life, some of which you learned about how best to live and others you regret.
What I once considered hard losses turned out later to have shaped my life in positive ways I could not have imagined. Theologian Henri Nouwen in his book “Wounded Healer” suggests that the wounds we experience in our losses can be sources of healing for others.
Of course, not all losses are equally felt. Some are relatively minor while others are major, such as the loss of a loved one. I know that when this has happened to me, the immediate feeling was like a great wave threatening to engulf and overcome me. At such times, I return to Morrie, whose stories are told by Mitch Albom in “Tuesdays with Morrie,” one of my favorite books.
Albom starts visiting his favorite teacher and mentor after losing touch, eventually visiting him regularly on Tuesdays. He learns that Morrie is dying, but his teacher’s final lesson is helping Mitch learn how to live and how to gain insights into dealing with losses.
Morrie tells Albom a simple story. A small wave is moving ahead in the ocean but notices ahead of him the other waves are crashing into the shore and seemingly lost. He thinks this is terrible, until a larger wave comes along and comforts him by noting that though every wave will crash, that’s not the whole story. “Don’t you understand,” says the large wave, “you’re not just a wave, you’re part of the ocean.”
John C. Morgan is an author and educator who writes about ethical issues, stories and guidance for living.
