Looking into the Abyss...

I found out a few days ago that the wife of a good friend committed suicide. It was like being kicked in the stomach for me. I can only imagine what it’s been like for my friend. His wife was the central point of his life. I don’t know any words that would comfort him…but my heart is with my friend.

Having been a counselor, I’ve known others who came see death as the only way out of their pain. They came to see life as a burden instead of a blessing. I can’t shake the feeling that I somehow failed those who came to me for help and went on to take their own lives. I live with their faces in my memory.

To someone without a sense of purpose in life, without a sense of meaning, life can seem unbearably empty. Clinical depression, an imbalance in brain chemistry, can cause us to perceive life that way, even if we do believe in a higher purpose. It can seem like an endless abyss.

My friend’s wife looked into the abyss and all she saw was darkness and despair. The pain and the emptiness became too much for her. It’s a scary thing to do…looking into the abyss. I once looked into it and saw only darkness and despair too. I know what it is to lose hope and fall into the emptiness. Without a firm footing it’s easy to lose one’s way. Depression affects so many of us and yet it remains undiagnosed so often. Many people feel like they should be able to simply shake it off. When it's true clinical depression that’s just not the case. The light at the end of the tunnel seems just too far away.

As a Christian, I know God as my rock and my foundation, He is where my footing is and I know it’s sure. Knowing God as my foundation has changed my perspective of the abyss. I now see it as full of hope and possibility. The thing that helped me the most was a simple ‘Thank You’. I just began to say 'Thank You' to God for this life, this gift that He’s given me. In that simple act my perception began to change. I began to see life as a blessing. I wish I knew a better way to share that with others.

Having been in the light it’s hard to see people wander aimlessly in the darkness. I just want to call out and tell them the light is all around them…if they’ll only open their hearts to see it. We can only do what we can do…we can’t live someone else’s life for them. We can’t make someone else’s decisions for them.

What we can do is be there for them. Sometimes just ones presense or the sound of a familiar voice nearby is a comfort. To learn to love one another is why we’re here. Love reaches out into the darkness and points the way towards the light. It’s too late for my friends wife. Maybe I can help point the way for my friend now.

May we all move onward and upward into the light.

Hoka Hey!

It is somewhat of a puzzle to me that so many people live their lives like they will live forever. It is the central fact of our existence that our lives are temporary…we will die someday. So many people push that fact out of their consciousness and go about their lives “eating and drinking and being merry” that they lose sight of any real meaning in life. It’s not, ‘He who dies with the most toys wins!’ It really isn’t whether you win or lose anything…it’s how you play the game that matters. How we 'play the game' is everything.

In every culture on earth throughout human history, every religion practiced by man has described an ultimate destiny for our race. We intuitively know that there is more going on here than meets the eye. Every religion has given voice to some form of the belief that man needs to live in harmony with the ‘rules of the universe.’ If we live in harmony with the rules, our destiny is greater. We sense that life is a kind of...proving ground. It’s not an end of itself. Whatever we may believe the purpose of life is, it clearly has something to do with growth. One has only to observe nature to see that all living things have a growth cycle. Acorns push up sidewalks to become oak trees!

We can choose to grow in life or choose to flitter it away in empty pursuits. There are myriad traps and blind alleys that can sap our energies in life. Alcohol and drugs, sexual promiscuity, amassing material possessions, and seeking power over others are only some of the empty pursuits that can lead us away from our real purpose. Every major religion on earth has produced men and women of wisdom, and they have universally come to the same conclusions.

While it can serve us well to always remember life is temporary, it doesn’t do to focus all the time on the fact that we’ll die. There can be something of a psychological trap in dwelling on that. We can lose hope and become depressed if our focus is a dark one. If, on the other hand, we embrace the fact of our mortality, it can help us to embrace life. We learn that we can’t hold on to it, so we learn to appreciate the moments of it all the more.

The old Lakota battle cry: “Hoka Hey” (It’s a good day to die!) offers one such example. Though it has often been misunderstood, it's message is actually a positive one. It can teach us to embrace life by not to trying to hold on to what is fleeting. Life is not a thing to hold on to, it’s a process that we experience. It's like a song in which we have the opportunity to embrace each note...but only while they are being played. One can enjoy a good song, a book, or a movie but they’ll end. They, like life, are processes that we experience. We can let the experiences slip by with only the barest awareness or we can embrace them and fully participate in each moment.

What life does offer us is a choice. We have it in our power to choose how we meet life at every moment. We can be there fully for the experience or to let it slip by while we’re in a fog. We can choose to grow or we can choose to do nothing and remain the same. Death comes to all either way…

The only things that really matter are the ones we can take with us when the lids of our coffins are closed. The only thing that we can take with us then is the character we’ve developed.

Life reveals the story of who we really are. Death closes the book. What is written on each page is entirely up to us...