Beyond the Narrow Life

Our ending is no ending at all, but a launching pad for continued engagement within your corner of existence.

“We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be…” —Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem1

Jung once echoed an ancient alchemist’s encouragement to his pupil, “‘No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.’”

And, it’s hard to contemplate death and change without contemplating loss. Everything is lost over time. We even constantly lose ourselves. In both a microcellular and psychological sense, we aren’t exactly as we were just a few days ago, much less after a year or decade.

Trust your curiosity to guide you to places of significance. And trust any moments of awe as signals that you’re on the right track.

Goals, like intentions, should be held lightly. If overly attached to goals and desired outcomes, we might forget the underlying values they’re meant to serve,

Yet the fullness of ‘mono no aware’ is in experiencing beauty and love despite loss. A feeling of deep appreciation intermingles with the mourning of what once was, or could have been, and what we know won’t last. Given that all things end, this same sentiment may prove helpful in understanding much of our human journey.

As the poet Rilke exclaimed, “I want to know my own will and to move with it. And I want, in the hushed moments when the nameless draws near, to be among the wise ones—or else alone.”73

What are our own cultural traditions around personal or spiritual growth? Can we reclaim them if we’ve lost contact with our heritage, our origins?