By David Coy
Sunrise
Throughout our life, whether we have ever realized it or not, we have been taught and trained to acquire. In their book “The Grief Recovery Handbook,” John W. James and Frank Cherry make the very excellent point that society is taught to acquire material and non-material things. I would add also ways of thinking. It is the ways of thinking that I am focusing on now. We seek to obtain approval and acceptance from our parents, in school or in our work place from early childhood up through our adult years. This is not bad at all, but it is incomplete. There is of course a danger of acquiring too much, but that is a subject for another time. The area that causes the imbalance is not learning to accept loss. We have learned to accept receiving and obtaining all our lives but have not learned to accept losing or loss. As a result of this skewered way of thinking, we think loss is abnormal.
We must begin equalizing, balancing and righting what has not been. Loss is normal. Loss is healthy as we have the opportunity to learn humility, gain wisdom and improve our character. We lose things, people and health routinely. We do not like it because we have somehow embraced the false belief (delusion) that once we obtain something (things, life, skill, etc.) we should possess it for life. The truth is nothing in this material world lasts forever. Our life span in general terms is 70-80 years (Psalm 90:10). This is not a guarantee but a general principle. Our life span can also be cut very short as an infant in or out of the womb (James 4:14), for our life is like a vapor (Gk. atmis, denotes a swirl of smoke). While time is ours, come to grief support group.
