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Part 19

Hope, Patience and Grace

I have been lightly reading the old Greek philosophy of Stoicism for awhile and have found that it has helped me in dealing with events over the past few years, and most specifically in dealing with the aftershocks of what happened to me during the years of 2015-2017 or so, where I went from being a father and raising two kids, having a technology career, and having a family, a functioning and active sexual body, being a husband in what I thought was a happy marriage,  with a house, two cars, the works.    I had it all.     

Within two years I had lost it all, and with it any sense of self I had.   What I thought was the solid foundation of my life  - my marriage - fell away beneath me as she had just "changed her mind".    My technology skills waned, half intentionally in retrospect, as I was beginning to look for another path.   My kids grew up and began leaving home.    Somewhere along the way my sexual impulses faded rather quickly along with everything else.  Body and Mind.   Everything I thought I was, was all gone rather quickly and stripped me bare, leaving me with very little to hold onto.      And all this at the age of 60.   Not an easy age to rebuild.  Lost the house, the marriage, the career.  Kids move away.  Left alone to pick up the pieces.    I wasn't 30 anymore.    60 is when you begin to think about settling in with the wife and keeping in touch with the kids as they set off on their own lives. All that was taken away from me.

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Anger naturally arises.    Emptiness.   Extreme Despair.  But there were two - or maybe three things that helped me get my battered self through from one day to the next, as that is all you can do during these kinds of moments.   Just get to the next day. 

The first thing was a book my friend Jordan gave me called "Transitions".   He had just been through a serious bout with colon cancer and had his life upended as a result, and had to get through it, and found the book helpful. 

Hope 

My main take away from that book is that when your life is turned upside down you are faced with not only a harsh ending, but also a new beginning, but in order to get to that new beginning you have to walk through a dark valley alone, and no one else can do it for you.   It is a dark solitary journey.  You have to walk through that long dark valley yourself, but still know that there is an end to that valley and that that new beginning is waiting there for you on the other side.      This talks to Hope, and even if not even knowing if that Hope is real or will ever manifest, it is at least Hope and not despair.    So I learned to half believe in Hope.   What other options were there?

The second and third things that have helped me in trying to reassemble myself into a new life is reading up on the teachings of both the iChing and Stoicism, as the ideas inherent in both of these teachings build upon that foundational Hope with the ideas of Patience and Grace.

Patience  

The takeaway I get from most of the iChing Hexagrams is that  - no matter the situation - often the best approach with the challenges you face is to have patience with them.   Very Asian in philosophy.     Study the currents swirling around you, and then wait for the appropriate moment to act, a moment when you have the best chance to turn things around in your favor.   You do not have to act right away.    Oftentimes taking a stance of Patience will lead you to the moment that becomes the most beneficial to you..

Grace   

An underlying message that I get from Stoicism that builds off of the practice of Patience is this:     If any of us lives long enough, we will all suffer loss along the way, and sometimes very painful loss.  We can either carry our anger around with us because of those things we have lost in life, or we can instead be joyful at the blessings we have been given instead.   It is a CHOICE we make every day.

It has become  - my - choice.     It is not that the pain of what I have lost ever goes away.   But I have chosen to overlay that sense of loss with being thankful for what I have been given. 

• I was given a good and caring family growing up, and was never hungry.
• I was blessed with personal confidence in myself, and travelled extensively in my teens and 20s, and learned to rely just on my wits and to trust my instincts.
• I met a woman at the right time, found a career at the right time, and experienced the joys of having and raising a family.
• I found a career where I could raise that family making good money.
• I have two great daughters that are grown now and living independent lives
• I have enough money at the moment to still have enough to eat and take care of myself, even though I have not worked in 4 years.   As always, So far :)

These are all completely amazing things to me, and I see them as blessings, especially considering that I feel like they  - have - been given to me.    

I always thought I would end up in standing in doorways at the end of my life, as I knew I did not have any great amount of ambition.    I got lucky with a lot of things along the way.   Sure I lost some things, but in my imaginary conversations with God, he would always answer "Sure, you have lost some things along the way, but would you also choose to have not gotten these other things?".

The answer to that is always easy, and the choice is the same every time.    It is not even a contest.   You are right.   I will always choose the life where I have received the things I have been given.  

It's not even close.