I spent a little time this morning with someone who’s facing his father’s impending death and his mother’s recent death.
I let him speak all about it and empathized. When I knew he might listen I said: when I was in what I thought was the worst part of my life my best friend told me something that didn’t register at first as I was caught up in the pain. I kept thinking about it and it started to sink in and it helped. This is what the best friend said: this is one slice of your life.
In some ways it both brought me to the present and helped to see the grand scheme.
Then he (the guy with the dead and dying parents) asked me if i thought there was an afterlife. I said we are all connected and when we die we are still, yet transformed.
The other things I told him was that when I worked in nursing homes and people were dropping left and right it helped to just write it down. Not that anyone would read it, even me, yet it was very helpful. Also I told him that pain teaches us. And all the things he is going through has books of knowledge.
I even made the leap to how recently I’ve found some freedom in writing comedy. Going for broke, touching those nerves like comedians do. Of any of it is really funny then laughter sort of transcends all the nonsense of life. Any good comedian has had thier fill of pain teachings, and that freedom to express even if noone ever reads/hears it (as some of it surely won’t be so appropriate to air) is somehow a powerful tool.
Needless to say it’s been an interesting morning thus far.
I had another very interesting time with another random person (out ride-sharing driving) who was sort of super smart, I think his name was Jason? I gave him this website and he told me to remember something to look up but I forgot. Remind me please.
So that’s all the drama I got… For now… There’s always interesting people and if I stop doing this I’ll miss the encounters dearly, but I suppose now that my longest career as a therapist and the billions of people on the planet will always have me rubbing up against the wonders of people.