 Psychologically Speaking
with Stewart Hase
Moving On
Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful for having had people in my life and for the things that I have had. It has been a rich experience.
But there are so many losses on the way along this journey. A daughter, my mother, my best friend: all gone. Losses don't just involve people. They can be jobs, status, places, ways of being, health, youth, behaviours, or other important security blankets. Anything.
This thought occurred to me as I held my father's hand last week as he lay in a hospital bed and reminisced with me about days when we caught fish on the empty and pristine beaches of Western Australia so many years ago. When we shucked fresh oysters (his favourite) off the rocks and dreamt of finding a black pearl that would make us be rich forever. But, of course, there is no forever and there is an important way in which we need to accept this to avoid all sorts of anguish.
My experience is that some people are well prepared for loss or change in their lives. In general they are not surprised too much when something unexpected happens. As a result they manage well by making the necessary adjustments in their lives and moving on.
Their grief becomes a time for new learning and for healing. This might mean moving to another town, changing jobs, forming new relationships, for example. There are those, however, who are less well prepared and are extremely surprised by an unexpected event. These people have the view that things will never change very much, that life is certain. As a result their level of distress can be much higher potentially leading to problems such as anxiety and depression. It becomes much harder to move on.
There is huge serendipity in life and we cannot plan for it of course. But we can adopt an attitude that certainty is uncertain and that flexibility is perhaps a very important survival technique.
We can prepare for some obvious changes that will occur in our lives such as marriage, children, aging, job change, children leaving home, death of our parents and other relatives, and retirement, for example.
Prepare so that we are not completely taken by surprise when something happens. Be ready for moving on.
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