Everyday Pleasures and "Why grieve?"

awareness, food, future, grief, past, peace, perfection, pleasure, progress, sadness, trust, vulnerable

One of the biggest lessons gained over the last two weeks: progress over perfection.

  • relationship with food

Food as a highly acceptable pleasure. Let’s find some everyday pleasures in lieu of eating. Possibilities include:

  • exercising (but not to excess)
  • reading

Helping

I wondered:

Can you help me through something without me having to tell you about it?

He was immediately like no. I was like….OK, really? You didn’t even consider it. 🤣 I rephrased it to “OK, what if I just tell you broad strokes but no details?”. Then it became a semantic conversation: “that’s still telling me”.

Where we landed is:

  • Given broad strokes, he can help.
  • His ability to help may be curtailed, he may miss things.

As I think about this post-session, it makes a ton of sense. If someone came to my in my job with the same ask “help me fix server but no touch server and no ask Qs about server”. I’d be like “yeah, I can help but it might not lead you in the right direction”.

We cut to it: trust is required for me to share this kind of stuff. I have to trust that I can tell him stuff and not be betrayed. That only comes with practice. As it is, I am more vulnerable and open with him than I am with…..anyone else. (That does make me a little nervous.)

Future Orientation

It might not be helpful.

I am a very future-oriented person. I am always focused on “what’s next?”. The downside is that I rarely take a moment to reflect on the past. I don’t stop to say “you just did a good thing”…or any other thing that helpful reflection on the past would yield.

We wonder whether focusing a bit on the past might actually be helpful.

  • What would life have been like if he had lived?
    • Consider.
    • Grieve that which did not happen.

Grieving what happened and the life that I could have had as avenues to peace and comfort. It’s OK that I am who I am and I am where I am as a result of what happened. Losing him has been a constant source of sadness for me. It’s been a constant source of sadness in part because of the lack of past orientation. Can I alleviate the sadness, process the grief and find some measure of peace and comfort by turning an eye back to the past?

Goal: Look at a photo of the departed and smile.

This was a fairly tough session, like last time. I cried a lot and that is OK.