When death gives us a checkpoint...

It's 2023 and at this point in our adventures on this planet, I'd imagine most of us have had experience with death. Death of a loved one, a pet, a parent, a friend, a community member, maybe even a friend of a friend who you admired. We can get into all the ick of the grieving process, which is very very real and takes however long it takes.

This week though, I wanted to bring into focus the invitation death gives us to do life differently.

Sometimes we get so consumed with life, technology and our many roles and responsibilities?that we forget that our time here is limited. We "know" it is, as we're told this often, but we don't often LIVE like it's limited.?We lose track. We get stuck. We allow stress and overwhelm to consume us. Most of us are running on autopilot like robots just trying to get through each day and keep our heads above water.

This is often what it's like to be human today.?

When someone dies though, it can stop us in our tracks to give us a life checkpoint?and make us wonder... are we living the way we want to be living?

And if not...?what the hell are we doing??

And more importantly, what are we doing it for?

I just returned back to the city from being with family out in the suburbs for wake and funeral services for a cousin who I truthfully barely knew, but wish I had gotten to know more. Isn't that the way it always seems to happen though? Time passes you by in a blink, life gets lost in the "we should get together more often!" which rarely actually materializes and before you know it,?it's too late. Someone passes.

That's the power in death though, it forces you to stop and gives you the opportunity to course-correct.

When you can be far enough away from the person that died?where you aren't seeped in overwhelming grief?(like when a community member or distant relative passes rather than a parent or close relative, for example) you get a really potent opportunity?to be an outside observer - where you feel deep compassion and love for the family and their deceased loved one, and can also stay centered within yourself to take everything in.

In this space can be powerful reflection for your own life. Sometimes you're in an environment during funeral services and such?with lots of family connection and support and you're not only seeing love and connection, but you're feeling it just by being in the room.

Other times you may find yourself in a space where you're seeing and feeling a lot of conflict, anger, bitterness and resentment in the room.

Either way, or any way in between, it holds the same potency to do a little self-discovery work and ask yourself the hard questions - what does this situation have to teach me? Does observing love, support and connection make you feel even more love, support and connection for your own family and friends because you have an abundance of this in your own life?

Or does seeing it sting a little because you don't have it to the degree you'd like, but deeply wish you did?

There it is. Direction. Your mile-marker and path forward in gratitude either way. Gratitude for having it in abundance, and that others do too.

Or... gratitude for bearing witness to what you want, and therefore can start down the path to create in some fashion in your life.

Conversely...?

Does seeing conflict, anger, bitterness and resentment bring up those same feelings in your life where you feel these same ways? Does it give you the fuel to take initiative to resolve those feelings in one way or another??

The truth is that our outside environment and reality are?talking to us all the time, giving us signs, signals and messages. If we get our faces out of our phones long enough to be present with the world that is happening all around us all the time, we can sit in this space of observation to take in what it's teaching us.

I'm curious, what is something death has taught you? If you would like to share it with me, I'd love to listen (read) it! Feel free to comment on the post or send me a message to share it, and if not, at the very least I hope I've been able to give you a different lens with which to see the finality of death with a different perspective.?

Wishing you a beautiful, abundant week full of all the things that make your life feel FULL, in the best ways, and may you see all the beauty that surrounds you each and every day.

I'm excited to share the newest addition to The How to Human Experience workplace wellbeing topics...

"Happiness and Longevity Secrets from Around the World"