FinanceDude said:
Well, after losing BOTH my FIL AND my sister, I am using that analogy to keep a positive tone............
my sincere condolence, financedude. i also am no stranger to loss. but even while having inherited covetous early retirement, the only benefit i see gained from losing my mom was the end of her undeserved suffering.
but i always say “being miserable won’t make you any happier.” shantideva put it more eloquently: "if suffering can be corrected, then there's no need to be despondent. and if it cannot be remedied, there is no benefit even if one becomes unhappy."
so i applaud your positive outlook especially in your grief. it was not my intent to deny, rather, perhaps, to temper desire to attribute benefit to suffering. while we might utilize such benefit as an antidote from poisonous suffering, after the symptom of sadness, regret, what-have-you subsides, we might be better off withdrawing the antidote before dependency develops and the cure becomes just another poison.
simply put, suffering sucks. so why would we compound that by thinking we should feel so guilty about being happy in the wake or even, if we so muster, in the face of adversity that we pay tribute to that suffering for those perceived gains.
i’m not saying some don’t need to be smacked along the side of their head to wake up at some point of their lives. thing is, even after you’ve awoken, life still hits ya alongside the head. (what are those, pretty post-it notes?) so that’s not where the lesson is, even if that is the route some take to learn it. perhaps there is a more graceful way to access this body of information.
for as long as we incarnate into these emotional bodies, no matter how enlightened the being, if you love you will hurt in empathy and mourn in loss. we’re supposed to be satisfied with that?
