Archive for August 2006
Just Smile! Please?
Lately I have been counseling/advising a couple of friends about certain issues which are getting them down… Although these problems superficially seem so disparate, when you really dig down to the cause of their grief, in its simplest form, you’ll always find the same culprit – a loss.
It’s become so clear to me that all of life’s problems are essentially the result of a loss of some sort. Every depression of your life, every negative emotional experience you have ever felt was a result of a loss. Its not an extremely profound impression of the world, but it is something that has definitely captured my own interest. If we know what worsens the human predicament, then why can’t we predict it? Why aren’t we better prepared? Haven’t we experienced a loss before? Why should this time be any different?
But you don’t understand, you don’t know what is like!
The answer is the degree of the loss – it is almost always different. The greater the loss, the greater the hurt. Even so, why do different people react differently to almost identical losses? My theory is that the probable return of what once was greatly effects the feeling and the severity of the loss. If you know something will never return, it becomes more black and white and our defence mechanisms kick in to help deal with the certain loss – at least in the short term. Read the rest of this entry »
