the elegance of subtraction

"understanding what piece to make missing isn't easy"

i haven't actually purchased this book yet but it is on my list of must read immediately. i read a bit of it here. what has stayed with me is this growing idea of less is more and the subtraction such a discipline requires.

i'm still trying to understand, accept and execute the things that i need to eliminate from my life.

death changes those left behind

"When we mourn our losses we also mourn ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all."
-Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

losing someone changes you forever. death changes those left behind. always, a part of you is buried with the one you love and that doesn't change. the mourning and the grief will subside and the emotions will calm but your very person is changed. the rhythm of your life has changed. the arc of your joy has changed. forever.

in a country that praises independence we fail to understand this. when you love someone you forge a connection and that changes who you are and when they disappear you change again. it's not as if they never lived but that they live no longer.

there is no shame in connection. there is no shame in the disruption that disconnection creates. it just feels that way because all around the grieving person the world continues on.

"A single person is missing for you and the whole world is empty."

the year of magical thinking - joan didion

i wandered into barnes & noble on tuesday night looking for something. i stumbled upon this book. i had heard good things about the book how it chronicled the loss of her husband.

i cried and cried and cried through this book. it was so truly beautiful. it was so honest and i identified with so much that she shared about her grieving process which is so personal and chaotic. i didn't know that she was episcopalian. i didn't know that her husband was also a writer.

i needed this book.

"i realize how open we are to the persistent message that we can avert death. And to it's punitive correlative, the message that if death catches us we have only ourselves to blame."

"I know why we try to keep the dead alive; we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us... There is a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead."

i'll probably be posting bits and pieces from this book for a while.

the endless pursuit of romantic love

Without hesitation, the Dalai Lama said,

I think that, leaving aside how the endless pursuit of romantic love may affect our deeper spiritual growth, even from the perspective of a conventional way of life, the idealization of this romantic love can be seen as extreme. Unlike those relationships based on caring and genuine affection, this is another matter. It cannot be seen as a positive thing. It's something that is based on fantasy, unattainable, and therefore may be a source of frustration. So, on that basis it cannot be seen as a good thing.

The Art of Happiness, The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D.