To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning (Roberta Flack)

So what does 'coming to terms' actually mean?  It translates to mean different things for different people.  Inevitably.  We are so very different.  We have different ways of coping with what life has a nasty knack of throwing up in our paths.  What we seem to share is incredible, and often unimaginable resilience.  I am reminded of this every week.  

We do not choose to be born into this world, and we are destined to die alone.  My line of work is concerned, at the most basic level, with these two facts, and the infinite possibility that lies in between.  What will you do, with this one oh-so-precious life?

Loss is inevitable.  We take anything for granted at our peril.  Tomorrow may never come.  How sad that we are apt to value only that which we stand to lose, or which has already slipped through our fingers and gone.  One day at a time is, as most of my clients know, something of a mantra for me.  It encapsulates something I have been reminded of so very profoundly of over the last couple of years.  

The past is gone, dead and history.  The future may never arrive.  We have only this.  Right here, right now.  What are you doing with your todays?  Are you doing what you love?  Are you spending time surrounded by people who are important to you?  Are you making the most of your body, your mind and your talents?  If not, why not?  

Everything is in flux.  Nothing stands still.  Move on we must.  The whole time:  from this moment, to the next.  Clinging only causes us pain.  Letting go is eternally challenging.  What we love most we must first accept is not ours to keep, and then we must be prepared to surrender it, before it is snatched from us.  

We are all of us forever 'coming to terms' with these existential truths.  We do not invite them, but would do well to welcome them:  this is, I think, the key to thriving rather than surviving.  Life is hard.  We are promised a rough ride of it.  But this need not weigh heavily if we are connected to a sense of our own strength.  We are born with innate aptitude for life and it's pitfalls.  Unfortunately, most of us seem to have been wired to underestimate ourselves and must spend much of our lives trying to recollect a sense of our own fortitude.  

Loss throws us, and shakes us to the core.  It hits hard, and cold.  We none of us like to be reminded of our frailty, and impermanence.  And yet it is in these reminders, though untimely and unwelcome, that we are reminded of that which makes us truly human.  The ability to feel and bear our most difficult feelings. 

Pain is only bearable if we know it will end, not if we deny it exists.

-Viktor Frankl

The world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

-Helen Keller

I'm not sure we ever arrive at the destination 'Came to Terms'.  I haven't yet seen the sign.  It's all a work in progress.  Loss prepares us for more loss.  Loss reminds us of losses that we haven't fully mourned.  Grief is important.  In acknowledging endings, we may come to value those things that continue and appreciate that and those that mean something to us.  We needn't wait until we've lost something to come to recognise its importance.  Perhaps, as the trees shed their leaves, we might take inventory of those things in our lives that we would feel bereft were we to find ourselves without them. 

Pain is the most individualised thing on earth. 
It is true that it is the great common bond as well, 
but that realisation only comes when it is over. 
To suffer is to be alone. 
To watch another suffer is to know the barrier that shuts each of us away by himself 
Only individuals can suffer.
-Edith Hamilton