Loss of Life

I was speaking to an old friend today and it came up in conversation, the phrase 'loss of life'. It is interesting to me how we normally use the phrase 'loss of life' when there's been a death. In my work, in coaching, in therapy, in consulting, it is quite often about breathing life back into life. A midlife crisis is often triggered by a realisation that someone has lived a partial life- that there has indeed been a loss of life- that a vital part of someone's being has been dormant and/ or, for whatever reason, has been 'switched off' to make way for economical survival or prosperity. In mid-life, we realise the cost of this on our soul but by that time, it is a bit difficult. We are entrapped in half-life we have created for and around ourselves. The price at this point is huge so, for many, there is a 'settling' and a surrendering to the inevitability of unfufilled potential. It is not my choice.

Meaning making

Apparently we are meaning making creatures- it is in our nature. Yet nature itself is without morality- it just is. Stuff happens not because of anything- why should this leaf fall instead of that leaf? Is it because this leaf is better or worse than the other? Of course not. Yet judgement and morality permeates every facet of our lives. It permeates this piece of writing. It may permeate your thoughts as you read this piece of text. My own personal history gives me a closer appreciation of the lack of morality in nature. My mum died relatively young- she was 71 at the time- perfectly healthy, internal organs of a 30 year old. Yet she died suddenly and without warning. Is it her 'karma'? Was it something she did? Did she live a life that 'deserved' a sudden death? I was not able to have successful pregnancies that resulted in a healthy birth of a child- was it right? Does it mean that it was 'probably a good thing' because I may not have been a good mother- that, somehow, it was 'for the best' that I couldn't have children?

Recently, I had a conversation with a great man, Len and in the course of that conversation I said to him 'it was a real pity that he did not take his talent further- that he gave up and never quite developed his immense potential as an artist' and Len's answer was 'it is not a moral question- whether he did or did not. A man has to earn a living. Pure and simple.'

It's a hard to really accept this fully. I have an intellectual understanding of this but I have not yet got to a place of letting go of my need to making meaning and come to true acceptance of the nature of nature.

Reflective and reflexive

I was talking to a friend today, of a sudden awareness, of how I reflect on my projections- it has become a habitual/ reflexive thing. For a long time, I have wondered what it really means to be reflexive in the context of personal development. This is how I came to the realisation: I was talking to a friend about his friend and how he needs to let go of his daughter to set her free- to be an adult and to carve out a life for herself. As soon as I said that, I though to myself 'What is it that I need to let go of in order to set me and others around me, free?' I have come to agree with my friend and trusted colleague, John, and his saying 'if you spot it, you've got it'. This means pretty much means that everything I pick out, every comment I make is a projection- something I recognise in myself that I have disowned and put it onto someone else. The fact that something stands out for me- that in itself means that it is something that is significant in some way to me- that more likely than not, it is something that I need to pay attention to. The more I am emotional about whatever it is I am picking up, the more this is likely to be true. The reflexivity is doing this self-checking as habit- that I reflect on my thoughts and actions as a matter of course. I do not know exactly when it happened but it is a shock to recognise that it is happening. I suspect that years and months of supervision and unpacking/ processing thoughts and actions in therapeutic training, in consulting and coaching---has, in some way, helped me internalise a process of self-reflection and self-examination. In case it seems like a lot of navel-gazing to you- well, it is and it doesn't have to be. More a case of acute self-awareness.