That is the history of how my blog traffic has gone. Some things draw a lot of attention (e.g. the Shangri-la Diet) and some things draw very little attention or readership (e.g. grief). You would think I would blog more on dieting and less on grief, but anyone can write or blog on dieting. There is a method, it is free, easy and it works.On the other hand, there aren't that many people blogging about grief, and when someone is in need, it is worth blogging to be there for them.
On a related topic, life, grief and reality, I've been thinking about what it means that we are eternal. I've even been thinking what it would mean if we were only as old as the last ice age.
I meet people in their 80s and 90s who look at changing the sheets as something that happens every half hour. In November they are planning for next year's Christmas. Yet, I remember what it was like to be a young child and to have Halloween coming up and to think Christmas was forever away.
I can imagine someone who is a thousand years old, who sees Christmas coming so fast that it is the same as I think of sleeping tonight. How fast must even sixty or seventy years seem to someone who is ten thousand years old?
At that point, no matter how intense emotion seems now, no matter how long it seems to last (and it seems like forever sometimes), how intense is loss, how long does it really last if it is temporary?
I can see someone who is ten thousand years old saying that everything terrible anyone can experience in this life "is but a little moment" and that while it is significant to those who experience it, we perhaps over rate the importance of whatever sorrow, loss or mishaps we have in our brief lives.
I look at the standard of living I have now, and I look at the Sun King of France, and I prefer my life to his. Were things unfair then? Yes, but I suspect that anyone in the Kingdom of Heaven will prefer their life to the life I lead now. They will probably see as much difference between my life and the lives of others in this era as I see between the lice on the Sun King and the lice on one of his peasants.
Less, perhaps, if they look at life the way many game players look at game experiences and choices. For a game, for experience, for learning and perspective, people prefer vastly different lives for their characters than any of us would choose for ourselves. Yet, to our eternal selves, we are the characters that they lead or play in order to learn, have experience and gain perspective.
Which blends religious retrospective with grief themes, something that draws the least attention of anything I write, yet is what I find the most meaningful.
7 comments:
Interesting thoughts on "but a moment" givent today's Sunday School Lesson (Isaiah 54:8).
I have been thinking, for quite sometime about something that you said about choosing to go on a diet.
You said, something like, I was ready to face your emotions that you had been hiding with food. I am sure it wasn't exactly that, but that is how I read it (in a nut shell)
When I consider grief...
It's almost like it is done in seperate lifetimes.
When I lost my daughter, I went cold inside. It was years, it took me, to really feel things again. My husband and I divorced over the loss of our daughter (in a home fire).
But when I think on it now, though I miss her and think about her ofent, it is with love and not with pain. Oh I still experience grief, but it is a different kind.
It seems a lifetime ago, that she was here.
Then when I lost my father, sort of the same experiences, ect.
I tend in my memory, to think of things almost as in different lifetimes.
The difference between a child waiting for Christmas and an adult, are very telling, that was a great analagy.
What I have been considering, is what you said, about food.
I think I do this, and I once didn't.
Now that I know, I have to choose to either, ignore it or deal with it.
I appreciate your candidness.
(sorry, this is so scattered)
Wow. Lots to think about.
You know, Stephen, it sure seems like life is flying by for us. I can't keep up.
Lisa, I didn't know you'd lost a child. I'm so sorry. I relate to what you're saying about "seperate lifetimes." I feel like I've lived so many lives I'm totally fragmented.
I hide, I think, in books and TV.
We had this topic, "what do I really want?" in my Al-Anon meeting today and it really shook me, because I couldn't think of what I really want. The things I want are impossible, maybe.
brianj
Nice tie in, God is always saying things like that and seems to mean them.
lisa m
I didn't know you had lost a child as well. I like that observation that it seems like a separate lifetime.
annegb
"what do you really want" is a hard question sometimes, especially after your heart blocks you from thinking about what you really want because it just isn't possible now.
And all the short term things, gee, they are just short term, flying by and "wanting" seems to be more than they really call for.
Yet the things we truly need will be ours, "in a little while" -- though it still seems so very long.
david
I find that everything seems to go fast but losing weight -- even when it drops off quickly and easily. Well, lifting weight to regain strength seems to take forever too ;)
I think you know your purpose and that is what makes this a very good place for us to check in for time to time. Thankfully, I do not relate first hand to grief. For those that do, what you say is invaluable.
Grief is so confusing. They say everybody grieves differently. I wonder if I could grieve for my grandma who was the first person that I lost that was close to me if it would help me to get over some of my problems. I mean I would think it would be normal to grieve for her as I was extremely close to her. She was in such pain and yet so gentle. I visited her in the hospital when her mind was not quite right at that time and it scared me to think of being with her again sitting in bed like we used to as we watched her t.v. I think that is when I first had my fears at night that I would die. Those went away and then a few years later I thought about wanting to die about every minute of the day. Now I worry that something I could do could cause somebody else to die. And all the while, I have never really grieved for her in the sadness sense. But I was only 13 and very backwards at the time and I can't just manufacture grief if it is not there.
I hope you continue to blog on what matters to you, Stephen, because that's why I come here--to read what *you* write about. Life, death, and everything inbetween =)
I appreciate positive ways you've mentioned that husband or wife can do to support each other in grief. I seem mostly to have no feelings or great anger, and often I find it so hard to be kind, let alone consistently kind, or kind in ways that will really matter.
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