Pam died five months ago and the question of starting over has been a very real one for me. How do I go forward? What does a "successful" life look like absent my partner? Who am I without her next to me? Where is the meaning in my life? All of these questions and more have been part of my daily experience since her death.
In earlier posts I've defined sustained success as the process of developing the capacity to continuously start over. Learning to do so in the aftermath of the death of my life's love has been a wonderfully rich and rewarding experience. This is not to say it's been without pain. The grief I've experienced has been profound. AND, the beauty in this is the profound awakening that has occurred in me about this life and how to lucidly experience and live it. Truly, death is proving to be the gateway to both life and to living it with joy, grace and gratitude.
Momento Mori
This Latin phrase is literally translated into "Remember, you must die". Being willing to face the unavoidable imminence of my death is an incredibly powerful catalyst. Part of my journey through my grief has involved this facing. It has taken me to (literally) standing on the precipice of a cliff and looking into the void and experiencing the inevitability of not being. What does it mean to be inseparable from the void that is consciousness; that place where the separate "I" that I think of as me does not exist?
I've come to realize that the fear of not being is the most powerful inhibitor of my ability to truly experience creating the life of my ideals. The degree to which I am able to embrace my death and celebrate the fact that "I" don't exist as an entity separate from all consciousness is the degree I am free and, ultimately, awake. The greatest gift Pam has given me in her death is this realization. Death is what dies...life doesn't die.
