Morbid—or genius? Grief as a Reason to Live
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“This is mine…today.” I thought as I poured mouthwash into the cap of the bottle.
Because tomorrow isn’t promised. And I know that. What I have today, even in this moment, may or may not be mine any longer. Not in one moment, in one hour, not in one day.
And that is what you learn when Big Grief finds you. When you lose someone who was a pillar of your reality. Whose absence can be felt everywhere, all of the time. Because when they were alive, their presence was there too.
For me and a handful of my closest friends, that was a parent. For me, my dad.
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When I miss him, it isn't that I can't feel his love anymore. It's that I feel it now more than ever. Or rather, I realize—as I reflect back on my life and how he impacted it—just how much he loved me and I only now really see it clearly.
But I always felt it. I always knew it not in words or reflections but just unconditionally, in the moment.
Unconditional love doesn't die with someone, you feel it forever as grief.
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When I feel grief, it's almost indistinct. A fog I'm looking at everything else through. A layer of intensity in a moment that seems so mundane. A filter that colors every other emotion.
Happy, but through grief.
Sad, but through grief.
Sentimental, but through grief.
Creative, but through grief.
Angry, but through grief.
Hopeful, but through grief.
This quality is something only other Big Grievers can truly relate to. If you're reading this and you know, you know. You can feel it in your chest right now.
If you're reading this and Big Grief hasn't found you yet, you might be thinking "ah, yes I've experienced grief before." but the kind of grief you experience and then it has an end isn't Big Grief.
Big Grief is always. It doesn't mean you don't move on. It doesn't mean you surrender to depression. It doesn't mean your life is worse in any way.
It means that you carry within you an understanding of Big Life that you never had before.
I think this is why near death experiences and terminal illness diagnoses have such an impact on our perception of reality, too. They give us a brush with Death, which is a brush with Big Life.
The result in either case is that you get an opportunity to be more alive—now.
That means something different for everyone. For some, it's taking a trip they've always wanted to take or changing careers. For me, it's learning how to make my default enjoying the moment because I don't know what's coming next. When previously I have defaulted to ruining the moment because I think I do know what's coming next. Loss and pain. And I think I can prepare for those outcomes. Or I can stop the next wave of Big Grief from coming.
It's trying to play Time Manager. As if I could ever be ready for Big Grief. As life could ever be the same after it. As if I would want it to.
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Gratification might be best delayed, but joy isn’t. Joy is best right now, and now, and now. I think that's why we say we "enjoyed" something. Because joy is a feeling that comes from letting yourself "enjoy" something. You only get the feeling from the being.
So noticing it in the moment is essential to experiencing it.
Joy doesn’t really come before something the way anticipation, hope, or excitement do…or after it the way hurt, anger, or feeling betrayed does. Joy swells in the present like a warm, glowing light. Something characterized by its easy fleetingness, and yet infinite availability. It must be cousins with unconditional love.
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I never thought I’d be deliberately practicing enjoying my life in my thirties. I thought I’d just have made "a life I loved" by now and so I would be, as result, enjoying my life. It turns out it’s impossible to make "a life you love" by hating the life you’re living. You must enjoy the life you have in order to have a life you love.
Enjoy the force that animates you. Enjoy the surges of energy that flow through you. Find delight in the sheer experience. Let joy coexist with everything else. Let joy become a fog, a layer, a filter.
We all get started chasing a life we love in fucked up ways. We imagine so many obstacles in our way. We make them real. We sabotage ourselves. We’re scared of what we want.
We're saving joy for when we have "the life we love."
We think we’re not allowed to enjoy something we haven’t worked "hard enough" for…yet.
But the real joy comes when we understand that Big Life happens in Small Moments—and only when we let it.
Big Grief happens even though we don't want it to. And it happens outside of our control. So we can fight its next arrival by robbing now of the joy we could have. Or we can greet the next wave with Big Life already happening.
Let Big Grief show you the depth and breadth and vibrancy of Big Life.
