Sometimes, there is pain
Sometimes, there is excitement
There are always new possibilities
I have always preferred the American approach to life, which asks, “Why not?” in contrast to the British refrain of “Why?”
Why? presupposes fear and limits: Why bother trying something when it is possibly, almost definitely, maybe likely to fail? The carefree starting position of Why not? implies we will not know unless we try, and in trying, we will likely discover some limitations or obstacles we can readily overcome with persistence and perseverance.
As a facilitator and a coach, I face this every day. I start with “Why not?” because it is not my place to assume the client’s limitations are my own and vice versa. As parents, we do something similar with teenagers. We think that because we can’t do something, they will not have the capacity to either. On the contrary, nature improves each successive generation, and diversity in thinking among large groups and family systems is a resource that serves all. We can, if we choose, sit back and marvel in awe and wonder.
It is freeing and liberating to know one’s limits and to test them. There are things I could not do as a child; testing has revealed as I get older, I am far better at things I could not do back then. And far less capable now of some things I could easily do as a child. For some, this can be a thing to mourn. There is a trend in grieving at the moment. I observe it in awe and curiosity. I wonder, had I not lost so much: my family in genocide and my parent’s culture through migration, would I be so clear in my wish to celebrate what is gained from knowing great loss?
Some grief is bottomless. You could spend a life in that place mourning all that is lost and forgetting to honour and celebrate all we have with reverence and gratitude. Mourning with integrity is a celebration of what has and will always be loved. There is no right or wrong way to go about it, for some mourning can last four hundred years when loyalty permits the need to suffer without end.
Sometimes, grieving without end pulls us into the realm of the dead. Remember, life and death love us equally; both will welcome us with open arms. It is for us to decide which we would prefer, the abundance of life or the limits of death—the freedom of our limitations or the limitations of our freedom.
Life is full of choices. Some we can control, and others are in the hands of the Gods. Fate, Kismet, destiny—whichever word you prefer—exists in every language, suggesting that, like soul, spirit, zest, and zeal, it is a universal feature of life.
Similarly, some ideas invite us to wholly embrace life, and many more ask us to embrace its limits. I see this most often in the mechanical application of our experience as humans. We are rewired, triggered, programmed, disinformed, misinformed, and so on, as if we are machines programmed solely by our life experiences. Constellations reveal something different because the spiritual aspect is prevalent in life. As spiritual beings, we are moved to experience things in a particular way as a result of the soul making meaning of something that becomes thought. A machine is triggered by a mechanical event; it is not sentient, and it is not part of a family soul. These trances that invite us to know ourselves as mechanical facilitate the disconnection from understanding ourselves as beings that are part of the planet we are told we need to save. The result, as we see, is collective hysteria, shock, disbelief, and suicidal ideation when confronted with reality.
It is also possible that we are the living expression of a soul, our family soul, which is connected to the Great Spirit that is seeking and learning through each of us. In this way, how free can we ever be?
The soul is a power that keeps all living things moving. It governs development and procreation, bears witness to the exchange between all living things, keeps them alive, and then seems to leave them when their time is fulfilled. Life is not personal to us; we do not know it and cannot control it. In this sense, we cannot lose either. The soul, my soul, your soul, our soul. All souls are in service to another higher power that is all-knowing. We don’t have a soul. We are in a soul.
As we move into the depths of winter in the northern hemisphere, I invite you to consider the possibilities of the unknown and the unknowable so that our journey onward, regardless of where we are, can always be a delicious surprise!
