Words have power. That has already been described in a previous story. Our words are who we are. They can take us where we want to go. The question is: Where do we want to go?
I recently received a catalog of wonderful courses on almost every significant topic one could want to understand. So much information that it would need an eternity to understand. Knowledge of a universe is endless and really doesn’t get at what really matters. So what, if one knows everything, or even a lot beyond what is needed for survival in the human condition? What will it actually do to make one a complete person? Does one want to invest one`s life in learning something that won`t make him or her a more complete person? Or, does one want to round out their completeness? Does one want to go there?
My personal answer is no. I, like everyone, have been given a limited number of days, and I want to use them to take advantage of the gifts I have been given. Gifts that allow me to become what I want to be. One who enjoys what he has been given. Enjoys it to the fullest extent possible. Let me again quote Bob Fitzgerald who was able to relight his life: “Don’t try and compare a new chapter to an old one – just enjoy the new one for all its worth!”
Well, where do I want to go? How can I get there, especially since my main guiding light has departed, and my pathway has been seriously darkened?
From where I found myself when my partner died, I immediately was so distressed and disoriented, that nothing seemed possible. I was in a deep spiritual decline, and basically unable to see any way back to where I had been. I did, however, have one bit of unusual good fortune that lingered in my brain all during that down time – writing.
I have previously described how I wrote memoirs as a morale booster to compensate for my necessarily limited contact with my former life. Somehow the benefits of that writing registered in my consciousness and gave me pause to reflect on its power. Especially, its power to help me see my own self as I really was – good, bad, and otherwise. It was about evenly divided. But the revelation enabled me to see the power encased in words.
It actually caused me to realize that I could relieve some of my constant parade of distracting thoughts by channeling them into a kind of messaging that would get them into the open where I could physically see them and come to grips to what had really happened. To realize that death is a part of the package we are given when we achieve life. It happens to each of us, and we must acknowledge and accommodate it.
Also, with that acknowledgment was the memory of how Jean and I communicated. Lots of husband and wife talk. Not always moonlight and roses, but always real. What put me on the track of writing was my way of continuing those conversations with her as I now saw her in another place. I wrote about that process in my story “Conversations with Jean*.” It turned out that when I did that on my laptop, I could send copies to my kids, and they could take some comfort in knowing that I was still mobile and capable – it helped them in more ways than one.
So writing became my instrument for relighting. Words that described her being, which overrode the sadness in my knowing that she was gone.
I knew she was gone. I needed no reminders, nor any more distressing thoughts constantly roaming through my brain. I just started talking to her like she was still here with me. In the depths of my being I know she hears me, and that when I die, as I surely will do, we will not have had any interruptions in what has transpired.
Knowledge is a reminder of loss. Don`t dwell. It has happened, and it is the concluding part of a story of earthly living. It is not going to change. But relighting can restore some of the joy of what has departed.
*I have, in a separate section on this website included my entire series of “Conversations with Jean.” It is an ongoing process, and will continue until I go to the place where I will be with her again, and go over them in person with her. And, I am updating them on the site, as I write them.
Writing recaptures being. Writing recaptures elements of life – all life, including that of your lost love. It is your version of their being. Write away – it is you. Your writing is now a part of your being. You can do anything you want to it, relight it, even make it better.
It is the most important component of Relighting Us.
When you relight a memory on www.relighting.us, it lives again.
You give…
You get…
Here is the Relighting Formula
• Go where you and your partner had fun
• Take someone close with you
• Relive the fun together
• Write it up
• Share it on this site
It is the doing that makes it all work…
Make it work for you…
Start now…