By David Coy
Sunrise
We live in a very fluid society. We are constantly on the move. One person has suggested that employees of some companies transfer every two to five years. It also is not uncommon for servants of God who proclaim his word to move periodically from one work to another. This has been a standard for long enough to enable study of the effects on families and individuals. When transition occurs, people uproot their familiarities, relationships and attachments built during the time lived at a particular location only to move to an unfamiliar place and to leave the familiar and relationships behind. It is difficult and a cause of grief mentally, emotionally and physically to leave everyone and everything you know and to start over someplace unknown. It is believed that one in five people in America move every year.
The health of our whole being is tied in our social contact with one another. It is a known fact that forced isolation has a negative impact upon our mental and emotional well-being. Don Marquis said it this way: “All religion, all life, all expression comes down to this: to the effort of the human soul to break through its barrier of loneliness, of intolerable loneliness, and make some contact with another seeking soul, or with what all souls seek, which is (by any name) God.” This feeling of being uprooted comes in many forms. It can be children who are enduring the divorce of parents or from the loss of a loved one, as it is said of Sigmund Freud when his father died. In the same way, loving and being loved is the greatest blessing one can experience in life, yet it also brings much sorrow when separation comes. We may be blessed by our experience of grief just as loving has. Life is ever changing.
This is Sunrise Aftercare, sunrise@sfdcares.com.
