Speaker 1Hello, everybody. How you doing? Hope all is good. Today's conversation is going to be about probably the hardest thing we go through as people, which is losing those that we love. So we're going to talk a little bit today about how we can view death, how we can look at death and this type of loss, what grief is, and how we can deal with grief in a way that's healthy and in the best way possible, right? Because ultimately, I do think philosophy has definitely helped me deal with grief and loss in my life. And we have a few sources today that I'll suggest you take a closer look at that I hope will be helpful too. So let's get into this conversation. The first thing I think that comes to mind with me is how do we situate ourselves towards death? So we've had a conversation or a number of conversations on the podcast about the stoic idea of memento mori, primarily focusing on remembering in those conversations, at least, that we ourselves are mortal, right? So of course, this also applies. So I'm going to talk about the stoic idea of memento mori. And I'm going to talk about the stoic idea of memento mori. So I'm going to talk about the stoic idea of memento mori. And what I want to talk about more than the reminder of this reality and the reminder that this is a natural part of life is that we don't have to view death as something that's scary or frightening or horrible, right? So for Socrates in the Apology, he is pretty unfazed when he's convicted and condemned to death, right? What he tells the jurors basically is, look, tomorrow, you guys will wake up, you'll have a regular day. I've been condemned to death. So I go to die tomorrow. Which one of us is better off? We don't know. Right? So basically, he's saying to them, you've condemned me, but not really. And his understanding of death is that it's not something to be disturbed by. He thinks of death as either a long rest, that would be like sleep, or he thinks of it as some type of afterlife, right? Which is something that we get from a lot of religions that when our physical bodies, you know, pass or, you know, expire in this world, our souls continue to live on, right? So Socrates again, either said, either I'm sleeping, or my soul will live on in Hades. And for Socrates, as he says, Hades is actually really interesting, or it sounds like it might be very interesting for him, right? So he's not frightened by this. And sometime after that, we get Epictetus, another ancient Greek philosopher telling us that, quote, men are disturbed not by things, but by the principles and notions which form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible. Else it would have appeared to be so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible. Right? So we don't have to have such a frightening image of death. Right? And again, I think a number of religious, religious ways of thinking encourage us to not see what occurs after death as something terrible, right? The conception of heaven, for example. So I think we can find comfort in a philosophical understanding of death, that either it's a long rest, or it's some type of engagement in an afterlife. We can take time to grapple with ourselves, our own meanings, right, around death, and see what Epictetus is saying, that we're making a lot of this in our own imagination. And we can change some of that narrative, right? And we also get another perspective I want to share with you all that we're going to refer to this essay a lot this episode. It's from the School of Life. Once again, I strongly suggest you go on that website, the School of Life, look at the essays, right? Thebookoflife.com will direct you to the School of Life, and you'll find a wide selection of really powerful philosophical essays, some of which are super short, others are a bit longer. And I think sitting with some of these essays, very good idea. So what de Boutin offers, again, he, Alain de Boutin is a philosopher that founded the School of Life. So what the School of Life and the Book of Life offer on this issue is ultimately, and we're going to unpack a lot of this today with this essay, but of course, he's saying in this, akin to or similar to what Socrates and Epictetus were saying, there's nothing fundamentally wrong when we lose people, right? This is unfortunately a part of what it means to be alive. It's written, as he says, quote, So we shouldn't forget that. And that goes back to the Stoic idea, where we can prepare ourselves for loss with this idea. And I want to focus this episode more on how we can deal with loss when it occurs. But ultimately, once again, similar to what the ancients are telling us here, the School of Life tells us, quote, Right? We mustn't worry, as the School of Life tells us. They are not unhappy. They are properly at peace. They don't need us now. They don't blame us for anything. They're not angry with us. We cannot hurt or disappoint them. They do not resent us for being alive. Right? So we can understand this. I think we can apply it. And we can hopefully try to see that this perspective, that this individual we've lost is at peace. Right? They're no longer burdened by the troubles of being alive. And that's something we can take solace and we can find peace in. We can, in our grief, find peace in the idea and the fact that they are themselves also at peace. Right? So let's try to maybe re-understand or get a new understanding of what death is. Our loss is something that is painful. Definitely. Right? So let's talk a little bit about what that pain is and how we can work with that pain. But just because we are in pain as a result of them no longer being with us does not mean that they are in pain. Whereas, again, as philosophy is providing here, as religion provides, whether you believe in life after death or not, right, regardless, the person we've lost is not in pain. They are at peace. And that can, or visiting that idea frequently, can hopefully grant us, some peace. Right? So on that note, let's get into figuring out what grief is. Right? So I think grief, and this is something we'll see in a moment too, true grief, authentic grief, especially, you know, strong, let's say strong or powerful grief, only comes as a result of love. Right? So we connect the idea that we've loved somebody and then we've lost them and now we are grieving. So we have to find some beauty in this because it comes from love or having loved and lost. Right? So what I think the School of Life asks us to consider in a very meaningful way is that grief is a legitimate part of that process of loving and losing. Right? They tell us, quote, our ongoing grief is simply the price we pay for having loved. Right? And I think this is a great and really powerful point. We don't need to get over the loss. Okay, we don't need to think that there will come a moment where we've totally recovered or forgotten, or even a moment where we should try to ignore a legitimate and authentic feeling of grief. We have to learn to live with grief and with loss. And that process will, of course, be painful, but it could also be something beautiful and something positive and something optimistic. Right? We shouldn't try to overcome the loss or the fact that we had such a wonderful love with somebody. Right? As the essay tells us, quote, death is not something we should ever rightly want to overcome. Love is in this sense eternal. So again, the part of that grieving process that we should never try to fully shake or get rid of, a part of that is, once again, a result of love. And not only a result of, it's a way to sustain our love that we have with this person. Although they've passed, we can't can and should try to do that. And one pathway to that is through gratitude. And the essay titled When Someone We Love Has Died, which I've been talking about in the School of Life, tells us that the person that we've lost would want us to miss them. And at the same time, they would hope for their memory, not simply to be a source of pain. They would hope for us to remember that behind and prior to this pain, there was joy, tenderness, fascination, insight, loyalty, and moments of sheer fun. They would want us, us meaning the person and the people that are still living, to endure. Right? And again, gratitude for the love, the time spent with the person, the relationship. And to do that is to really have gratitude for the grief. Because once again, if grief is strong, it's only because the love was strong. And that is something that can give our lives a lot of meaning. Right? And when we continue to continue to think about the individual that's passed, to talk about them, to share their stories, right, to try to embody, too, what they stood for, the goodness that they stood for, to try to live in a way that is similar, to try to live through and with the lessons that they, that they gave us, that they showed us, keeps them alive in a very meaningful way. Right? As this essay tells us, the moment when someone dies is not when their body ceases to exist. But when the last person dies, it's not when their body ceases to exist. a person whose life was touched by them dies. again pass along to others what we've learned from the person that we've lost and in so doing we make them immortal in a very meaningful way right the essay tells us quote these people they continue to survive within us and i would say within us is very significant and also when we pass it on to others through our ways of acting and speaking right and ways of being more broadly we're keeping them alive right the essay tells us i think wonderfully we will hear their voice completely clearly and they will advise and console us death does not have to rob us of this they live inside us now so for me this is very meaningful and this has been one way philosophy has helped me i think cope with my own losses in life i still hear and in a way talk to communicate with you know within my own mind of course um for example my grandfather still play a very prominent role in my daily life i still hear them advising me it's one major way i feel connected to them to this day but i ask myself a lot like what would they do in this situation how can i emulate or how can i model myself after them that's keeping them alive in a lot of ways right for example whenever i take pride in my work i really think about my grandfathers and that's a way for me to have a positive relationship to the love that we shared and the lessons they taught me and it's a way of grieving that is that's a way for me to have a positive relationship to the love that we shared and the lessons they taught me right and even when there is a moment of pain and as we've said right we don't have to fight that we don't have to get over it that's not a healthy way to look at things right and we can look to philosophy for this idea right a lot of um a lot of what we get from this too can come from culture right um you can think about traditions and various cultures that ask the living to communicate with those who have passed away in a meaningful way right for example this is just irony that i'm recording this now and i recently saw a really great movie called the farewell and it talks about mortality and family and loss and preparing for loss in chinese culture and there's a really great scene where they go to um the cemetery and they leave it's a part of the cultural tradition to leave foods that the person who passed away enjoyed and kind of have a conversation with them with the family and visit them and i think we could do that in a physical sense and we could also do that in a spiritual more philosophical sense in in the way or in a way of just sort of sitting and meditating right it's a way to have a greater sense of control over the narrative that we should perpetuate that we should continue between us and this person right that that we shared love with right that that can't help us endure right and it's not an attack on love to endure and to love again love wants what's good for the other love wants there to be more love right this is another great line from the essay okay the person that we've lost will follow us through the rest of our lives and no one can separate us from them we miss them so much and yet they are still here and we can cultivate the sense that they are still here by not simply trying to get over our pain or ignoring our grief but instead engaging with our grief you know in a way again like one one i just mentioned a moment ago from the movie the farewell that brings us closer together with those who are still living those who are still with us and those that we love and that are also grieving right in ways that can help us think about what was so great about those relationships and from those conversations we can work to develop ourselves right we can learn to grow and develop in the ways that we love ourselves and love others in a way that would make those that we've lost proud and happy right we can do that in ways that they would encourage right so i think grief can be a very powerful emotion because it's connected to love and because love is inevitably connected to loss but what this essay when someone we love has died tells us among a few other things is that to grieve is natural and it's necessary and it doesn't have to be entirely painful and it doesn't have to be unhealthy right confronting death and especially loss of someone else is surreal it can feel very odd our lives have changed our lives have shifted right what we shouldn't do once again is rob grief of its legitimacy and try to get over it what we can do instead is cultivate gratitude for the person and for the relationship and try to live in a way and feel in a way and be in a way that would make them happy and proud for us right and by acting and living and speaking in this way and by you know even having conversations in our minds and in our lives we can be more grateful for the person and for the relationship with them and then acting um acting on the beliefs the values that they had in life we keep them alive and that's meaningful too and in the movie the farewell once again they talk about or they display a tradition that i think again another one comes to mind we think about the day of the dead right in mexican culture it's a way of communicating of connecting and keeping memories alive and that's a very meaningful and important experience i think another aspect of this is the question you know when we're grieving how can we feel good so of course we've talked about how can we feel good and we've talked about how can we feel good in relationship to the grief but how can we feel good disconnected from grief right because i think i can think of examples in my personal life of individuals who are consumed by grief such that one they they don't really have a positive relationship again maybe through the path we have gratitude to their grief and they basically succumb to the grief such that their they don't really have any goodness in that grief they don't see really or they seemingly at least don't see any goodness outside of the grief they start to grieve as if they have a moral obligation to only feel bad and i think this is something we should try to avoid right again we've talked a lot about throughout different conversations the importance of balance right you don't want to be excessive and you don't want to be deficient you don't want to grieve too little that's unhealthy right you don't want to grieve too much you don't want to grieve too little you don't want to grieve or for too long a time right because one as we have in this essay we talked about already the person we loved would not want us to live that way they loved us they'd want us to endure and move on and love other people love ourselves and be happy and see the goodness in the world because what we had with them when they were in the world was something good right so i think the first thing we want to avoid that may happen is we don't want to feel bad about feeling good so by that i mean we don't want to feel bad about feeling good about something that is disconnected or seemingly disconnected from the loss we can and should still enjoy things in life we shouldn't cut ourselves off from that right so don't feel bad about feeling good the next one is i would say don't feel bad about feeling bad more connected to our first part of this discussion but grief will hit you right we don't want to feel bad about feeling good maybe you're feeling good that day and you'll hear a song or you'll even smell something or maybe you'll drive past a certain part of um the neighborhood the person used to live in and grief or a moment of grief will hit you don't make yourself feel bad about having that pain during a day where things might have been generally very quote-unquote let's say quote-unquote good that day you're having a good day a little bit of grief hits you and you feel bad about feeling bad don't once we get used to philosophy, we can look at emotions. We can look at our, quote, passions and examine them. So do that, right? What reminded me of this person? Again, how can I see this as something to be grateful for? How can I see that this pain is teaching me something instead of making yourself feel bad for feeling bad? Right, so that's a couple suggestions. I would also say taking things day by day is a really meaningful way to look at grief, right? We're going to be in a state of grieving, of course. Don't overwhelm yourself by worrying too much about next month or next year. Focus on getting through the day and, once again, noticing the goodness that that day can offer. Right, a part of the idea that we, you know, we shouldn't feel bad about feeling good is also that we should open ourselves up, once again, consciously with an effort to see the beautiful and good things every day. We shouldn't close ourselves off to that. Right, so open ourselves up to this idea that today can offer me something good. Don't feel bad about that. And then take it day by day so we can actually see those things clearly. The next episode I'll post will likely be about taking it day by day. There's a great essay, once again, from the School of Life and the Book of Life that I want to share with all of you. And I think that this works well for how should we grieve, right? And how can we find the goodness in life when we're in a state of grieving, right? After a loss. So taking it day by day is a great way to not get overwhelmed and to not put too much pressure on ourselves right and then part of that is to open ourselves up to what is good today what can we be grateful for today another suggestion and this kind of goes with don't feel bad for feeling bad we have to learn how to not fight with our negative emotions right i think literally imagining yourself walking alongside your negative emotions your fears your grief is a very healthy thing to do right especially because as we've talked about you're not trying to overcome the grief you're not trying to conquer the grief one of the attributes of someone passing is that that is to a degree right in the physical sense of them being with us it's permanent so we have to establish a healthy permanent relationship with our own impermanence and with the impermanence of others so we should strive to walk alongside our pain our grief and as we've been saying this whole episode see that it's not just pain see that it's also love see that it's also gratitude there's also positive memories and when we do that we can actually walk with our pain not try to confront it in an aggressive way where we're trying to conquer it the goal might not be to conquer the pain but the goal i think should be to not get conquered by it either so it's about a stop establishing a healthy balanced relationship right where we're not fighting we're walking alongside and the way to not succumb to the grief once again is i think you know to implement some of these suggestions right um another one i think that we could work on aside from seeing the beautiful things and we could really make that into a daily writing practice too um is to try something new right so maybe you know maybe we've lost somebody and we're trying to fill a void in our lives and again we'll never be able to fill that void exactly ever we have to make peace with that that being said i think a very interesting definition of grief that we get from a writer named jamie anderson is that grief is just love with no place to go so maybe we have to find a way a new way to redirect some of that love again we've lost somebody that we've loved we can't interact with them in the way we used to a part of that is making new ways to interact as we sort of discussed but we can also find entirely new ways to express our love for ourselves those around us our loved ones and even the world more broadly as we've discussed in other episodes that can make us and help us feel better right so maybe it's about volunteering maybe it's about a new as we discuss a new self-love practice maybe it's about making sure that we interact in let's say more meaningful or we interact more frequently with the people in our lives who are still here that we love right so how do we not necessarily once again abandon our grief live with our grief have a healthy relationship to it and also how do we maybe introduce a new direction for the love that we feel like we've lost i think one example of this that once again kind of ironically i was talking to a friend of mine recently who's um who's reflecting on one of their losses in life and it was the leader of their youth group from their church so this is a person who played a large role in their in their childhood a large role helping them grow up they were you know going to youth group twice a week they were really involved with the other sort of um let's say like we went on trips they did plays so it was it was a large part of their childhood a large part of their teenage years and they were really involved with this um and they've stayed involved and when this person passed away not only did they stay involved involved but they stepped up and they are now the leader of the same youth group and when i talk to them about this they really seem to connect to the youth group and helping the kids in a way that's super meaningful not only because of course that's admirable noble and good work but it's a way for them to engage with the memory of this person who helped them so much by sort of paying it forward right so that really i think goes to this quote of give our love someplace to go this person when they were leading the youth group um and my friend was a kid was almost in a way teaching them how to lead the youth group that's how close they were right so when the person passed my friend stepped into this role and it's been really meaningful for them and it's helped them grieve for this loss in a really healthy way they don't avoid the grief every every year when the person you know um every year on the day when the person passed they not have a community to share this pain with and they have a community that didn't even know this person but now they do right so all these younger kids who weren't in group before the person passed the memory of this person is kept alive vividly on a weekly basis with their activities and then when they sort of you know use the word to celebrate when they celebrate this person's life on the day when they passed it's just it was really interesting and moving to see how they come together and uh share the pain but also share the love that this person had for the for the youth group so my friend stepping into that role has really been a healthy way for them to grieve and i think is an example of again how we can redirect our love as a result of having lost somebody in a positive way to serve others and in so doing help ourselves have a healthy loving sense of grief so i hope some of these ideas were helpful again it's a very very hard difficult thing to deal with i do think it can help us reevaluate how we see death it can help us reevaluate maybe and work on healthy ways of seeing grief and give us some practices and some ideas of how we can start feeling good because once again the person that we've lost loved us they would want us to live well hope this is helpful thank you for listening i'll talk to you soon
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