At the last Saint Joseph Hospital Community Resource Fair discussions with people who stopped at my table were as varied as the people who roamed the tables which touted services and literature.

Conversation ranged from our culture’s inability to discuss end-of-life to organ donation. One woman said she was saving old medication and sleeping pills for the time she deems her self ready to go. Another told me how helpful her church was by carrying copies of The Five Wishes to inspire congregants to consider their choices and finalize them with loved ones and legal counsel.  Many people prefaced their comments with “…when the time comes,” or “… if I were diagnosed with …  I would….”  Do we ever really know what we would do?

Often we just don’t know what choices we might make unless we were actually in that place…walking a mile in their shoes. These questions come to mind when dire news is shared to us by a friend. When someone else is facing their worse nightmare scenario, what experience do we have to draw upon which might enable us to offer valid comfort.

There is nothing more disheartening when confiding to someone than to have them jump in and respond with, “Oh, I know just how you feel….”  Most of the people who say this actually have no idea how the other person is feeling, and they usually haven’t listened long enough to get a real sense of what the first person is trying to share.

Remarks such as, “You shouldn’t feel that way,” or “What you should do is… ,” may diminish the validity of the speaker’s true feelings. Consequently, the speaker may feel that they are not entitled to the emotions that they have just confided to you, and will now refrain from sharing openly.

Listeners sometimes depend on using clichés to comfort, or to create closure for the conversation in a way that appeases the visitor. The freedom to openly communicate helps to meet the expressive needs of participants, while providing an opportunity for consoling in a nurturing way.

We can lean too heavily on conversations about “fighting this thing” or “beating this disease.” It’s so important to provide a safe environment which allows our friend or loved one to open up about their fears. We need to be able to demonstrate that we are capable of being good listeners so they can voice their inner most concerns, and so they can say what needs to be said.

Our friends and our loved ones are entitled to the space of consciousness to process this immense transformation, and they look to those who are caring for them, and who love them, to stand with them through this preparation.

If Not Now, When?

Do you ever give much thought to how you are living? Most people attempt to live daily with moral standards, a good code of ethics, and maybe within a budget. Maybe you exercise daily and eat sensibly, too. But beyond all this most of us are too busy to contemplate more. Opening Chapter Seven in Please Dance at My Funeral: A Celebration of Life, I chose a quote by Emile Zola: “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I will answer you: ‘I am here to live out loud.’”

The title of Chapter Seven is What Am I Waiting For? What have you put off? Are you waiting for someone to give you permission to make changes in your life? We can become experts at convincing ourselves that we are happy the way things are, but we don’t have to live the rest of our lives convincing ourselves, and others, that change is impossible. We can choose to make a difference if we want our lives to look different.

“If we buy this illusion that we will live forever, we can waste all the time in the world before we are ready to live.” This quote comes from How, Then, Shall We Live? by Wayne Muller. My parents didn’t travel much until all the kids were older, and then not until after the passing of my last grandparent. Not very many years remained for my parents to finally enjoy this time together as mother’s cancer was soon diagnosed and took her life but a few months later.

Am I investing my time in the people and things that matter most to me?

Many people exist day in and day out for their work—often maintaining a level of exhaustion. It also makes us exhausted when we are not being true to ourselves. Smoking, excess food, alcohol are often turned to as an escape from stress—an escape from looking at what we don’t want to question or face about our life.

If I treat myself with the respect that I deserve, and make choices that demonstrate that respect, Ill have more energy for the life I want to live.

Must we experience a diagnosis or illness to begin to listen to our heart or follow our dreams?

Who am I waiting to give me permission to live my life? What would I rather my life look like? Am I living a meaningful life?

Mueller goes on to remind us: “Shall we live not by accident, but on purpose…to consider our life as something worth living; an active, creative, passionate event? While death can be frightening, it can also grant us great courage to face what must be faced this moment. For if not now, when?”

The first week of January—the first week of 2012—I was surprised by the amount of discussion among my clients about it being 2012, and about fears for what may occur this year. Had there not been so much upheaval in the past three years, maybe fewer fearful thoughts might be generated now. I’m not without awareness of the Mayan calendar and various prophecies. I am also aware of how fears can paralyze us, diminishing the value of our days and stealing precious “being-in-the-moment” moments.

Pema Chodron speaks often to our fears: “We are killing the moment by controlling our experience. We want to hold on to what we have. We want every experience to confirm us and congratulate us and make us feel completely together.”

Are we afraid of death—or, are we afraid of life? If we strengthen our courage, do we automatically diminish that which feeds our fears? Try as hard as we might, there is no permanence. There is no price to be paid that can safeguard our insecurities.

How then can we enter this month and year functioning from a different point of view? Taking each day separately, and beginning each day with intention and affirmation to acknowledge courage in meeting our thoughts which define our moments, yields a day culminated in heightened awareness.

It must be us which defines our experiences, and it is time to see them in a different light. It is time to take each experience, each potential experience, and lay about its pieces to bare what aspect of it engulfs the whole as fearful. It is time to take that piece which provokes that learned emotion and declare it powerless. It is time to account ourselves with the responsibility for outcomes which are fed by fearful thoughts. It is time to choose differently. It is time to be empowered by the greater awareness and starve that energy that wrongly disables us.

Instead, consciously direct heart and mind to the future of each moment –engulfed with light and the vision of positive outcome for your highest good. Question not the power you interject into the seconds of each moment of each hour of each day. Examine your every participation from the inside out and examine under new illumination lingering shadows of doubt to extinguish. Then weather any winds of change that may come. Be the observer to your emotions before you react. But, if you are succumbing to fear now—the first month of the entire year—what can you possibly gain by killing every moment in your experience?

This is a new day. This is a new year. Define your role now.

A Blessing:

May you awaken each day to your true alignment with your highest self

and to find the solitude and peace of your inner knowing.

May you recognize your gifts and use them with the wisdom

with which they were bestowed upon you.

May you see in the mirror only your inner beauty.

May the truth of who you are free you from the falsehoods defined by others.

May you make moments in your day to celebrate your blessings

and accomplish living with gratitude in each moment.

by Judith Haynes,

Copyright January, 2010