Into the West

A common Sunday activity for me is driving home to my parent's house for a family dinner. The last few weeks during my drive NPR has been playing Being - a radio program that deals with questions of spirituality, science, meaning, ethics, and ideas. The particular episode I wanted to touch on was called "Opening to Our Lives." I should probably give a little background first.

This year has already been really good to me. It looks like I'll finally be moving into a new apartment, with a friend instead of taking a gamble with a random stranger. I got a few more weeks of work than I expected, and prospects are continuing to line up fairly well for the future. In the midst of the excitement of my relatively young life, I have also had some significant reminders about change, mortality, and for lack of a better term, "the circle of life." On the same day my niece was born, I had a coworker lose a mother. A few months ago my grandma had open heart surgery, and then just recently she fell and broke several ribs. And then that same week I found out that I have another close relative who has MS.

Even in the gay community and mohosphere we have had continued reminders of the various struggles of life. People who are lonely, struggling to find acceptance among families or friends, and even suicides. James (who my thoughts and prayers reach out to) also recently lost his mom.

But such is life. There are no guarantees. We are born, we struggle, fight, enjoy, work, and love in this life, until eventually we die. And that was the main point of this particular episode of Being. Jon Kabat-Zinn (who learned to mediate at MIT) talked about how sometimes we act surprised, offended, or angry when bad things happen to us, yet we each know that it is only a matter of time until we all confront these kind of circumstances. Someday my parents will get sick and die. Eventually, the stock market will crash again, some people will lose their jobs, and most of us will lose part of our savings. Eventually there will come a time when I won't be able to find work, when I will get sick, and old, and make no mistake about it, eventually I will die. The point of being open to our lives isn't to be defeatist or negative. Just because I know some bad things will happen to me doesn't mean that I'm going to stop working to grow, change, and achieve positive results. But it does mean that when I do arrive at those tough moments in life, I can accept them for what they are. I can be grateful for all of the incredible things that I have already experienced, and I can trudge forward, finding small moments of joy in whatever time I have left.