By Jane E. Brody — 2007
With each diagnosis, knowing her life hung in the balance, she was “stunned, then anguished” and astonished by “how much energy it takes to get from the bad news to actually starting on the return path to health.”
Read on www.nytimes.com
CLEAR ALL
It is essential for those in caregiving roles to cultivate self-compassion alongside compassion for others, to create an inner atmosphere of kindness, expansiveness, and awareness in which resilience can flourish.
Hyla Cass shares the words of William Walsh, a nutritional medicine expert.
Every day, I get closer to the brink of everything. We’re all headed that way, of course, even when we’re young, though most of us are too busy with Important Matters to ponder our mortality.
Philosopher Joanna Macy on how Rilke can help us befriend our mortality and be more alive: “Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.”
It would be easy to get lost in all kinds of philosophical arguments about how we define who or what we are. This is about finding some space in the mind, less judgement, a greater sense of perspective, in which we see this fundamental truth for ourselves in a very direct and personal way.
What people do [when faced with their own death] is to begin looking into their own hearts and into the eyes of those with whom they share their lives. And all too often they find that these aren’t places they’ve looked very deeply before.
We will have to give up the notion that death is catastrophe, or detestable, or avoidable, or even strange. We will need to learn more about the cycling of life in the rest of the system, and about our connection to the process.
In McLaren’s view, we typically perceive emotions as problems, which we then thoughtlessly express or repress. She advocates a more mindful approach, where we step back and see our emotions as sources of information.
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I don’t know what happened to emotions in this society. They are the least understood, most maligned, and most ridiculously over-analyzed aspects of human life.
We’ll be better prepared for life’s challenges if we cultivate these 12 inner strengths.
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