The Last Stage Tactic

We humans have a loss cycle. It was stud­ied and pop­u­lar­ized by Eliz­a­beth Kubler-Ross sev­eral decades ago. She observed that when peo­ple get really bad news about their health, they gen­er­ally go through denial, anger, bar­gain­ing, depres­sion, and accep­tance. Strangely enough, our lesser losses fol­low the same pat­tern. The next time you lock your keys in your car, and you are too far away to call some­one you know, the same pat­tern will set in. You will look at the keys locked inside sev­eral times and say, “that can’t be” (denial), and then you get mad at your­self for lock­ing your­self out of your car (anger). While call­ing a lock­smith, you will bar­gain with your­self (“if I ever get those keys I am going to make copies and keep an extra set on a chain around my neck”). You get the locksmith’s bill and kick your­self (depression…“I am so stu­pid”). Finally, you accept what has hap­pened and what it took to resolve it. Life goes on.

On any given day, we go through the grief cycle. Some­times it takes min­utes; some­times it takes years — depend­ing on the loss and how well we seem to be work­ing through it. The point is to get to accep­tance as soon as you can and get on with life as it is now newly defined (for how­ever long or short). Life itself is a mat­ter of joy and grief. Most of us get stuck in some aspect of grief more than in some real­iza­tion of joy. I tell myself reg­u­larly: “Grieve and go on.” It pays to be aware of this lit­tle God-given cycle (Jesus in Geth­se­mane went through the cycle…and on the cross…and at the tomb of Lazarus). This is how we work.

Aim for the last stage. No mat­ter what has hap­pened to you in life (or what will hap­pen) you can run the cycle and get to the last stage. Accep­tance! I have learned to start the day with it. This is where I am in life. This is what I do. These are the para­me­ters to life that can­not be changed. That which is inevitable can be accepted and then tran­scended. Tran­scen­dence will not hap­pen until you get to the last stage of the cycle. If you get stuck in anger, you will grovel mis­er­ably in the dust of life. If you get stuck in denial, you will be the town fool. Do not waste your time bar­gain­ing with life. Life is not on con­tract with you. It HAS you. By all means, get through depres­sion with­out get­ting lost in it. The stages are nor­mal, but the spirit that gets you to “Thy will be done” takes some groom­ing. You are going to win today because you are going to be able to accept what­ever might happen.