Personal Optimism

The end of the coun­sel­ing process for most peo­ple is when they are finally able to kick back, smile, and phi­los­o­phize about where they have been in life and what it took to get where they are now. Heal­ing is a jour­ney — at a cer­tain point you can relax and look back at the adven­ture a moment before look­ing toward the next one. We humans have the abil­ity change — down to the last breath. The mind is in con­stant process; the spirit has to con­tin­u­ally find frames of ref­er­ence — means of inter­pre­ta­tion — to trans­late the appar­ent insan­i­ties of life into mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences. In the mind/body/spirit dynamic, put your money on the spirit. It has the first, mid­dle, and last say. For­tu­nately, at its deep­est level, it is an optimist.

We do not know how it is that we main­tain a sense of con­ti­nu­ity of the self from birth to death. The cells regen­er­ate at var­i­ous lev­els; we age; we tran­scend pre­vi­ous lev­els of func­tion­ing; we grow and mature. All along the way we feel like we are the same per­son. Even the most lim­ited per­son looks for­ward toward some sort of bet­ter future. It is more than wish­ful think­ing. World reli­gions all have their hopes and heav­ens. Human­ity is inher­ently opti­mistic — even in the midst of the most hor­ri­ble wars and nat­ural disasters.

At a per­sonal level, I have learned to grieve and go on. I have for­mer pos­ses­sions left along a trail through a half-dozen states. Like you, I have friends and acquain­tances scat­tered to the four winds and on both sides of the grave. Some­how all of it must make sense; in some great scheme, noth­ing is finally lost. All of the pieces are props, shells, wombs, and back­ground on the stage for some future per­for­mance that has no match and no finale.

No, I do not share the gen­er­ated dread and pes­simism of our time. My life does not depend on pol­i­tics or pop cul­ture (nei­ther does yours). We are not merely worker bees with W-2 forms and a tax sys­tem. We are eter­nal beings that are not what we were and are look­ing for­ward to what we will be.