Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  8:19–23) Paul mentions “creation” five times in those five verses. Hear, then, the voices of God and Bible, Jesus and Paul as they whisper insistently against the chorus of our narcissistic individualism: “It’s about the world, dummy. It’s about the world.” THE UNITY OF JEWS AND CHRISTIANS Paul moves next to a narrower division within that world separated into Gentiles and Jews. He focuses on the division within Judaism between non-Christian Jews and Christian Jews, between Jews who have not accepted Jesus as their Messiah and those who have. Paul had originally hoped that a unified community of non-Christian Jews and Christian Jews would be the future of Judaism. God would create that unity “not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (9:24) so that “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him” (10:12). But by the mid-50s when he wrote to the Romans, he already knew that something had gone seriously wrong with that expected unity. It was not happening and already looked like it would not happen. Hence this stricken cry: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh” (9:2–3). For Paul, however, this was not just a human problem to be solved, but a divine “mystery” (11:25) to be pondered. So his first focus is on God and how or why God has permitted this to occur. Divine purpose. Paul searches his Jewish scriptures for precedents and finds many examples of God’s unexpected choices and surprising reversals. Isaac, Abraham’s son by Sarah, was chosen by God over Ishmael, his older son by Hagar (9:7–9). Then, after Isaac married Rebecca, their younger son, Jacob, was chosen by God over their older son, Esau (9:10–13). That, says Paul, is God as Divine Potter, who can “make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use” (9:19–21). Paul then continues his biblical survey by citing those prophets who had long ago announced that God would choose a “people” from among the pagans (9:24–26), but only a “remnant” from among the Jews (9:27–29). What, then, about the great majority of Jews who have not accepted Jesus as their expected Messiah? Even as Paul faces what is for him a devastating reality, he never says that “even those of Israel” (11:23) are lost, condemned, and abandoned by God. Instead, we get a second emotionally charged cry: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  It is possible that the author of 1 Clement knew of that inclusion, although, as seen above, he presumed that Paul had reached Spain before his martyrdom. In any case, immediately after mentioning the execution of Peter and Paul, that letter continues by saying, “To these men with their holy lives was gathered a great multitude of the chosen, who were the victims of jealousy and offered among us the fairest example in their endurance under many indignities and tortures” (6:1). Notice, by the way, that Tacitus speaks above of “vast numbers” and 1 Clement speaks here of “a great multitude…among us,” referring, we suggest, to that same scapegoat persecution by Nero in 64 CE. There is a first irony here. Recall the fierce disagreement between Paul and Peter at Antioch in Galatians 2:11–13 from Chapter 3 earlier. They were finally reconciled, at least by later tradition, as martyrs under Nero. Also, recall the disagreement between the “weak” and the “strong” from Romans 14, mentioned in Chapter 6. We do not know if Paul’s plea for their unity was successful or not. But, once again, that discord was rendered moot by Nero’s brutality. Peter and Paul, “weak” Christians and “strong” Christians, united in martyrdom, were finally able to, as Paul prayed in Romans 15:6, “together with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” There is also a second irony. Paul did not know for sure that the letter to the Romans would be his last will and testament. He did know that accompanying the collection to Jerusalem was personally very dangerous. But the letter and the collection were both about unity and, eventually, that search for unity would cost him his life. He accepted that possibility. That is worth pondering for a moment. It was not Paul himself, but representatives from the assemblies involved who carried the collection to Jerusalem. Paul could, in other words, have refrained from going with them and, instead, gone straight on to Rome and Spain. But that east-to-west axis, the letter to the Romans, and the collection itself were about holding together a Christian unity of conservatives and liberals. It is hard for us today to feel profoundly about that ancient cleavage between Christian conservatives (kosher for all) and Christian liberals (kosher for none).

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  175 “Justification by Grace Through Faith” as Divine Potter, who can “make out of the same lump one ob- ject for special use and another for ordinary use” (9:19–21). Paul then continues his biblical survey by citing those prophets who had long ago announced that God would choose a “people” from among the pagans (9:24–26), but only a “remnant” from among the Jews (9:27–29). What, then, about the great majority of Jews who have not ac- cepted Jesus as their expected Messiah? Even as Paul faces what is for him a devastating reality, he never says that “even those of Israel” (11:23) are lost, condemned, and abandoned by God. In- stead, we get a second emotionally charged cry: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew” (11:1–2). So what is God’s purpose in all of this? Paul’s eschatological vision of God’s great cleanup of the world was for Jews and Gentiles to combine into one ultimate community in the sequence “the Jew first and also the Greek” (1:16; 2:9–10). But God, says Paul, has reversed that process. Now it is first the Gentiles and only then the Jews who receive the mes- sage: “So I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumbling salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous” (11:11). In other words, “a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in” (11:25). What is most striking in this whole section is the solemn warning to “you Gentiles” with which Paul concludes his en- tire exposition (11:13–36). He warns them sternly and lengthily, for example, against boasting and self-confidence with a striking image of Israel as an ancient and domesticated olive tree into which they are but wild and newly grafted branches (11:17–24). He emphasizes that all of this is a divine “mystery” (11:25), but

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  * By all accounts he was a wonderful father to his six children, and he and Dianna had an uncommonly solid marriage—a relationship envied by most of their acquaintances. “I remember a marriage that was so happy for sixteen and a half years,” says a close friend of Dianna’s named Penelope Weiss. “The first thing my daughter said when I told her about what happened, you know, with Dan and Ron and all, she said, ‘That can’t be true!’ She said, ‘All of us young girls wanted a marriage just like Ron and Dianna’s marriage.’ ” Ron’s apparent contentment, however, masked troubles that had been churning just beneath the surface since childhood. Although his father’s violent outbursts scarred all the Lafferty children to some degree, Ron—who had an especially close relationship with his perpetually downtrodden mother—seems to have suffered the greatest emotional damage. According to Richard Wootton, a psychologist who has examined Ron extensively over his nineteen years in prison, Ron remembers “seeing his mother hit by his father and being so mad that he wished he could have been big enough to have kicked his father’s ass. . . . I think that stayed with him. And it became a pattern by which he kind of handled difficult, mistrustful situations.” Ron’s anguish wasn’t apparent to outsiders. As a child, he had been popular with other kids in the community and brought home decent, if unspectacular grades. He was also an outstanding athlete who starred on his high school football team and was captain of the wrestling squad. Throughout adolescence and young adulthood he appeared to thrive. As was expected of high achievers in the Mormon faith, after graduating from high school and completing a stint in the army, he went on a two-year mission for the church, eager to spread the gospel so that others might experience the incomparable joy of being a Latter-day Saint. There is nothing easy about being a Mormon missionary. Missionaries must pay their own way, and they are required to go wherever in the world the church decides they are needed. In Ron’s case, after four weeks of indoctrination at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, he was called upon to save souls in Georgia and Florida. As an obedient Saint, he had already pledged not to drink, smoke, take illegal drugs, ingest caffeine, masturbate, or engage in premarital sex. * As a missionary, he was now also forbidden to read anything but LDS literature or listen to any music not produced by the church. Movies, television, newspapers, and magazines were strictly off-limits. He was permitted to write letters home just once per week, and he could phone his family only on Christmas and Mother’s Day. Ron dutifully followed these rules, for the most part, but he had a rebellious streak that emerged from time to time. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the warped relationship he had with his father, figures of authority provoked a complicated emotional response in Ron.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But the other, the Spirit, would lead me into the midst of life, to serve the common weal, and by furthering others to further myself, to spread light, and to present to God a people for His possession, a holy people, a royal priesthood (Tit. ii. 14; 1 Pet. ii. 9), and His image again purified in many. For as a whole garden is more than a plant, and the whole heaven with all its beauties is more glorious than a star, and the whole body more excellent than one member, so also before God the whole well-instructed church is better than one well-ordered person, and a man must in general look not only on his own things, but also on the things of others. So Christ did, who, though He might have remained in His own dignity and divine glory, not only humbled Himself to the form of a servant, but also, despising all shame, endured the death of the cross, that by His suffering He might blot out sin, and by His death destroy death." Thus he stood a faithful helper by the side of his venerable and universally beloved father, who reached the age of almost an hundred years, and had exercised the priestly office for forty-five; and on the death of his father, in 374, he delivered a masterly funeral oration, which Basil attended.1978 "There is," said he in this discourse, turning to his still living mother, "only one life, to behold the (divine) life; there is only one death—sin; for this is the corruption of the soul. But all else, for the sake of which many exert themselves, is a dream which decoys us from the true; it is a treacherous phantom of the soul. When we think so, O my mother, then we shall not boast of life, nor dread death. For whatsoever evil we yet endure, if we press out of it to true life, if we, delivered from every change, from every vortex, from all satiety, from all vassalage to evil, shall there be with eternal, no longer changeable things, as small lights circling around the great." A short time after he had been invested with the vacant bishopric, he retired again, in 375, to his beloved solitude, and this time be went to Seleucia in Isauria, to the vicinity of a church dedicated to St. Thecla. There the painful intelligence reached him of the death of his beloved Basil, A.D. 379. On this occasion be wrote to Basil’s brother, Gregory of Nyssa: "Thus also was it reserved for me still in this unhappy life to hear of the death of Basil and the departure of this holy soul, which is gone out from us, only to go in to the Lord, after having already prepared itself for this through its whole life." He was at that time bodily and mentally very much depressed. In a letter to the rhetorician Eudoxius he wrote: "You ask, how it fares with me. Very badly.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  “Drinking with the whore? Did you sleep with her too?” She smacked me in the face, not caring about my scars, her voice reverberating in my tenderized skull like a shot in a cave. She smacked me as she dragged me back over to the turquoise house, head, arms, anywhere she could get me. I broke away from her, knelt down, the bottle broken inside its silver cage, perfume already soaking the pavement. I put my hands in the puddle. My childhood, my English garden, that tiny piece of something real. Marvel gripped my arm, hauled me to her feet, screaming, “You ungrateful thing!”

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  As an adolescent Maggie found comfort in romantic stories and daydreams, most of which revolved around themes of postponed fulfillment—but always with happy endings. The imagery of yearning dovetailed with the affection-starved atmosphere of her home. In her high school boyfriend she saw the key characteristics that would consistently attract her: a devil-may-care but good-natured rebelliousness that was a natural complement to her nice-girl persona combined with a capacity for exuberant emotionality that was noticeably lacking in both her parents. For two years their relationship went well, though Maggie always wanted more closeness than what she got. After graduation they went their separate ways. A few years later when she heard he had fallen in love and married his college sweetheart, Maggie confronted another key feature of her eroticism: a persistent undercurrent of grief and loss. Subsequent relationships all had similar outcomes—often with another woman getting, with apparent ease, the very things Maggie had struggled for unsuccessfully. Each time a man broke a date, stood her up, or withheld affection, she experienced a flood of grief, as if she were being abandoned yet again. She could only be comforted by the apologetic voice and soothing touch of her lover. When that happened her sadness would melt in a tidal wave of passion, and for a moment she would feel whole. Her affair with the married man had been the most painful of all. From their first encounter she was convinced that he was the man she had been searching for, the man who possessed all the characteristics that fascinated her. He appeared to be crazy about her too and would often express the wish that they could be together always. He never actually promised to leave his wife, but Maggie assumed he eventually would, since he regularly spoke of a lack of love and sex in his marriage. Yet each time he chose to spend holidays or other special occasions with his wife, Maggie sank into despair. Eventually, she could stand it no longer and broke off the relationship. Unfortunately, she had been depressed and obsessed ever since. Sometimes she resorted to desperate acts such as parking in front of his house for hours waiting to catch a glimpse of him and his wife together or telephoning them and hanging up. REPETITIONS AND REVERSALSMaggie’s story highlights one of the most puzzling questions about all troublesome attractions, whether or not they revolve around longing: Why do so many of us repeat erotic patterns that have proven to be sources of suffering and lack of fulfillment? The most obvious answer is that our attractions, no matter how troublesome, work. Despite the pain they ultimately cause, at critical moments they are gloriously successful at generating ecstatic passion. It is difficult to overestimate what potent rein-forcers such passions are. Luckily, most of us learn from our failed relationships lessons that eventually steer us toward more workable partnerships.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Someone asked the eager promoter sent by the developers, "Who will you sell all those houses to—the jack rabbits?" Had you seen the delicate houses then, going up on the tract’s light gray soil, the ground scraped clean and as flat as Kansas, you might have wondered, too. 44 This is not a garden suburb. The streets do not curve or offer vistas. The street grid always intersects at right angles. The north-south roads are avenues. The east-west roads are streets. The four-lane highways in either compass orientation are boulevards. The city planted some of these with eucalyptus trees and red crape myrtle on narrow, well-tended medians and parkway strips. People passing through the city often mention the trees. They never mention the pattern over which they pass. [image "Image" file=Image00005.jpg] 45 The streets in my city are a fraction of a larger grid, anchored to one in Los Angeles. That grid was laid out in September 1781. The Los Angeles grid is a copy of one carried from Mexico City to an anonymous stretch of river bank by Colonel Felipe de Neve, governor of California. The grid the Spanish colonel carried to the nonexistent Los Angeles in 1781 originally came from a book in the Archive of the Indies in Seville. The book prescribed the exact orientation of the streets, the houses, and the public places for all the colonial settlements in the Spanish Americas. That grid came from God. 46 “Stop counting, mother,” I said, bending over her hospital bed. And she stopped on three. All afternoon she had been telling numbers as she died. She kept saying, “3, 2, 5, 3, 2.” I said, “Stop counting, mother.” She stopped again on three. What were they? Were they a telephone number or a street address? They were coordinates for a map I did not have. 47 Three-quarters of the United States is platted on a grid that follows the lines of longitude and latitude across the continent. The Land Ordinance of 1785, written by Thomas Jefferson, provided for the survey and sale of mile-square sections of land in the wilderness west of the Ohio River. The survey specified the strict orientation of these sections to the cardinal points of the compass. Jefferson’s grid, extending endlessly, explains why so many western states have sharp edges. 48 After more than ten years, Mr. H has exhausted all of the city’s administrative procedures. These are the confer ences, warnings, and deadline extensions that are the city’s sidesteps to a confrontation. Mr. H’s case is turned over to the district attorney’s office. He is brought before a judge and ordered to clean up his property. Mr. H tries to comply with the judge’s order. The junk dwindles from his front yard over the next three months, and then again at night it gathers. I think of his wife’s embarrassment and his grown children’s anger. I think of his neighbors. Mr. H has another hearing and is found in contempt of court. Mr.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  H goes to jail. In all, Mr. H spends rnore than sixty days in the county jail in downtown Los Angeles. He spends more time in jail than a check forger, a first-time car thief, or a man convicted of assault. While he is in jail, Mr. H’s family clears his front and back yards of the inevitable lumber and broken equipment. When he returns from jail, the yard is empty, and the bank forecloses Mr. H’s mortgage. His house is taken from him. 49 My father died behind a well-made, wooden bathroom door. It is a three-panel door. Each panel is nearly square, twenty-one inches wide by nineteen inches high. From edge to edge, the door is twenty-eight inches wide. All the original doors in the house are the same—grids of three rectangles surrounded by a raised framework. Painted white, as they are now, each square of each door is molded in the light by a right angle of shadow. The doors in my house are abstract and ordinary. The bathroom door is now forty-seven years old. My father was sixty-nine. 50 The house where I still live, and where my father died, predates the building of the rest of this city. The houses in my neighborhood were built at the start of the Second World War for workers at the Douglas Aircraft plant in Long Beach, about two miles away. That was far enough for the houses to survive a Japanese air raid on the Douglas plant. The War Department covered Douglas Aircraft in acres of camouflage developed by the movie studios to mimic tract houses. The false suburb, made of wire and plaster, successfully blended with the real suburb farther up the boulevard. No one who lived there questioned that the War Department could make these real houses the target of deceived Japanese bombers. 51 The houses in my neighborhood were built of lumber that was seasoned before the war. Today, carpenters and plumbers have to work hard at drilling through the studs. The frames of the houses are overbuilt. Adding a second story is easy. The bathroom door in my house is shut with a cheap replacement lock, the kind that dads pick up at the hardware store. It is a lock with a small hole in the outside knob so the door can be opened with a narrow-blade screw driver if a four-year-old locks himself in. I didn’t have a narrow-blade screwdriver. The seasoned wood of almost fifty years is Douglas fir. The door did not break when I hit it with my shoulder. The cheap catch did not spring from the lock plate in the doorjamb. And my father’s legs braced the door shut as he sat on the floor, his back against the bathtub. 52 My house is not very far from the hospital where my mother died. It is about a mile. Three years after her death, I rode to the hospital in the ambulance with my father’s body.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  You suspected she herself couldn’t quite identify the longing that she variously attached to you, to her job, to having and spending, to her missing father, and that she had once attached to the idea of getting married. You were married. And still she was looking for something. But then she would cook you a special dinner, leave love notes in your briefcase and your bureau drawers. A few months ago she was packing for a trip to Paris when she began to cry. You asked her what was wrong. She said she was nervous about the trip. By the time the cab arrived she was fine. You kissed at the door. She told you to water the plants. The day before she was due home, she called. Her voice sounded peculiar. She said she wasn’t coming home. You didn’t understand. “You got a later flight?” “I’m staying,” she said. “For how long?” “I’m sorry. I wish you well. Really I do.” “What are you saying?” “I’m going to Rome for Vogue next week and then Greece for location work. My career is really taking off over here. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you.” “Career?” you said. “Since when is modeling a fucking career? ” “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to go now.” You demanded an explanation. She said she had been unhappy. Now she was happy. She needed space. She said goodbye and promptly hung up. After three days of transatlantic telexes and calls you located her in a hotel on the Left Bank. She sounded weary when she picked up the phone. “Is there another man,” you asked. This was the track your mind had followed for three sleepless nights. That wasn’t the point, she said, but yes, there was. He was a photographer. Probably the sort who called himself an artist . You couldn’t believe it. You reminded her that she had said that they were all fags. She said, “Au contraire , Pierre,” ripping the last strained tissues that held your heart intact. When you called again later she had checked out. A few days afterward, a man purporting to be her lawyer called. The easiest thing all around, he said, would be for you to sue his client for sexual abandonment. Just a legal term, he said. His client, your wife, would not contest anything. You could split the possessions fifty-fifty, although she drew the line at the sterling and crystal. You hung up and wept. Sexual Abandonment . He called again a few days later to announce that the car and the joint checking account were yours. You said you wanted to know where Amanda was. He called back and asked how much money you would settle for. You called him a pimp. “I want an explanation,” you said. This was months ago. You haven’t told anyone at work. When they ask about Amanda you say she’s fine. Your father doesn’t know.

• From The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)

  These rites have a special aspect, which we are going to attempt to characterize and explain. It is the more necessary to study them by themselves since they are going to reveal a new aspect of the religious life to us. We propose to call the ceremonies of this sort piacular. The term piaculum has the advantage that while it suggests the idea of expiation, it also has a much more extended signification. Every misfortune, everything of evil omen, everything that inspires sentiments of sorrow or fear necessitates a piaculum and is therefore called piacular. [1233] So this word seems to be very well adapted for designating the rites which are celebrated by those in a state of uneasiness or sadness. I Mourning offers us a first and important example of piacular rites. However, a distinction is necessary between the different rites which go to make up mourning. Some consist in mere abstentions: it is forbidden to pronounce the name of the dead, [1234] or to remain near the place where the death occurred; [1235] relatives, especially the female ones, must abstain from all communication with strangers; [1236] the ordinary occupations of life are suspended, just as in feast-time, [1237] etc. All these practices belong to the negative cult and are explained like the other rites of the same sort, so they do not concern us at present. They are due to the fact that the dead man is a sacred being. Consequently, everything which is or has been connected with him is, by contagion, in a religious state excluding all contact with things from profane life. But mourning is not made up entirely of interdicts which have to be observed. Positive acts are also demanded, in which the relatives are both the actors and those acted upon. Very frequently these rites commence as soon as the death appears imminent. Here is a scene which Spencer and Gillen witnessed among the Warramunga. A totemic ceremony had just been celebrated and the company of actors and spectators was leaving the consecrated ground when a piercing cry suddenly came from the camp: a man was dying there. At once, the whole company commenced to run as fast as they could, while most of them commenced to howl. "Between us and the camp," say these observers, "lay a deep creek, and on the bank of this, some of the men, scattered about here and there, sat down, bending their heads forwards between their knees, while they wept and moaned. Crossing the creek we found that, as usual, the men's camp had been pulled to pieces. Some of the women, who had come from every direction, were lying prostrate on the body, while others were standing or kneeling around, digging the sharp ends of yam-sticks into the crown of their heads, from which the blood streamed down over their faces, while all the time they kept up a loud, continuous wail.

• From Bold Move

  But I won’t lie to you: probing painful moments can hurt. In a strange way, I think of this as emotional surgery. Yes, we could keep taking a painkiller to make the hurt go away, but is that really addressing the root cause, or just lessening a symptom? Also worth noting is that while these feelings and memories may bring up unpleasant emotions, my clinical training has taught me that, if nothing else, emotions can be viewed with detachment the same way we train ourselves to view thoughts as just passing through. If you can notice it, you can learn to observe it objectively without being hooked by it. I don’t say this to minimize what you may feel, only to give you the courage to feel your emotions without hesitation—and by doing so, uncover what matters most to you. Set a Bold Vision Now that you have identified your values, the next step is to embrace being guided by them. Being guided by our values is one of the keys to cognitive flexibility. 19 Cognitive flexibility is key to pursuing goals even when challenges arise. 20 In other words, values allow us to keep moving forward toward our goals even when we face obstacles. Many of my clients look at me skeptically when we discuss setting up these values-driven visions, as though it’s all well and good to do this as an academic exercise, but quite another thing to apply this to the real world, where chaos reigns. So, how do you do this in an actionable way outside of these pages? Look at it this way: if values are the compass, then we need a general direction (if not a specific destination) that helps us live a more meaningful life. Central to this is having a bold vision that is—and this is the important part—anchored on a value that is intrinsically motivating. By “bold visions,” I don’t mean frivolous achievements that are there to be marked off, noted on social media, and forgotten about. I’m talking about important milestones that are central to who you are, the things that are deeply attached to your values and, when experienced, give you a feeling that, yes, this is what I am on this earth to do. It need not be flashy or impressive to others. It only needs to be meaningful to you. Is your heart pounding as I ask you this question? Because mine certainly is when I consider this in my own life. I am often intimidated by these kinds of audacious visions. They scare me! The pain, the process, the likelihood of failing . . . all those fears that I am not being enough. But you are not reading a book on how to avoid: you are here to become bold, which is not painless.

• From Bold Move

  Don’t censor your brain or try to interpret this moment with needless concepts. Just try to throw yourself back to that moment as much as possible, using all of your senses to land there. Once that movie is created in your mind, I want you to take a piece of paper and write about that moment for ten minutes. To make sure you keep yourself accountable, set a timer. Just free-form journaling here, nothing fancy. Write whatever comes to mind about this difficult time in your life. We will use your narrative to help you identify some of your core values in the next exercise. Below are some questions that you can use to create this narrative if you find yourself stuck. Where are you feeling it in your body? What does it feel like to allow this pain to come in? What are you saying to yourself in that moment? What memories might come up when you allow that pain to surface? For example, when I asked Ricardo this question, he immediately burst into tears and told me, “For me to not feel pain about the divorce, I would have to not care about my wife and children, which is impossible. I love them and that is why this all hurts too much.” Similarly, when I asked myself this question, I would have to not care at all about my well-being in order to not feel anything when I fail to act in line with that value. When I allow myself to really look at this question, I immediately get tears in my eyes because I know that if I don’t invest today in my physical health, I might be robbing myself of precious time I could have later with Diego. So the idea of finding the value through pain is based on this notion that we only feel emotional pain when it is related to something we really care about. 14 As such, this reflection will help you get in touch with your pain by taking a look behind its curtain to see what you really care about. Once we have this knowledge, we can then create a plan that realigns your life. Identifying Compromised Values Through Pain: Stephanie’s Values Stephanie did this exercise focused on the latest fight with her family. To be fully in touch with her own pain, she requested to do it in Mandarin, which was an excellent suggestion given that research suggests that using a less proficient language can actually create emotional distance from the topic. 15 If you doubt this, try to write about a serious or emotional time in your life in a language you barely know! My guess is the results won’t be terribly gripping to you or the reader. Stephanie wrote about her latest explosive and damaging conflict regarding her American versus Chinese identities.

• From The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)

  As soon as the last woman has passed, they take the box from her, and take it to the ditch, near which is an old man; he breaks the bone with a sharp blow, and hurriedly buries it in the debris. During this time, the women have remained at a distance, with their backs turned upon the scene, for they must not see it. But when they hear the blow of the axe, they flee, uttering cries and groans. The rite is accomplished; the mourning is terminated. [1257] II These rites belong to a very different type from those which we have studied hitherto. We do not mean to say that important resemblances cannot be found between the two, which we shall have to note; but the differences are more apparent. Instead of happy dances, songs and dramatic representations which distract and relax the mind, they are tears and groans and, in a word, the most varied manifestations of agonized sorrow and a sort of mutual pity, which occupy the whole scene. Of course the shedding of blood also takes place in the Intichiuma, but this is an oblation made with a movement of pious enthusiasm. Even though the motions may be the same, the sentiments expressed are different and even opposed. Likewise, the ascetic rites certainly imply privations, abstinences and mutilations, but ones which must be borne with an impassive firmness and serenity. Here, on the contrary, dejection, cries and tears are the rule. The ascetic tortures himself in order to prove, in his own eyes and those of his fellows, that he is above suffering. During mourning, men injure themselves to prove that they suffer. By all these signs, the characteristic traits of the piacular rites are to be recognized. But how are they to be explained? One initial fact is constant: mourning is not the spontaneous expression of individual emotions. [1258] If the relations weep, lament, mutilate themselves, it is not because they feel themselves personally affected by the death of their kinsman. Of course, it may be that in certain particular cases, the chagrin expressed is really felt. [1259] But it is more generally the case that there is no connection between the sentiments felt and the gestures made by the actors in the rite. [1260] If, at the very moment when the weepers seem the most overcome by their grief, some one speaks to them of some temporal interest, it frequently happens that they change their features and tone at once, take on a laughing air and converse in the gayest fashion imaginable. [1261] Mourning is not a natural movement of private feelings wounded by a cruel loss; it is a duty imposed by the group.

• From The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)

  The tribal mothers and aunts (sisters of the dead woman's father) follow her example; they also throw themselves on the ground, and mutually beat and tear each other; finally their bodies are all streaming with blood. After a while, they are dragged aside. The elder sisters then make a hole in the earth of the tomb, in which they place the Chimurilia, which had previously been torn to pieces. Once again the tribal mothers throw themselves on the ground and slash each other's heads. At this moment, "the weeping and wailing of the women who were standing round seemed to drive them almost frenzied, and the blood, streaming down their bodies over the white pipe-clay, gave them a ghastly appearance. At last only the old mother was left crouching alone, utterly exhausted and moaning weakly on the grave." [1256] Then the others raised her up and rubbed off the pipe-clay with which she was covered; this was the end of the ceremony and of the mourning. [1256] Among the Warramunga, the final rite presents some rather particular characteristics. There seems to be no shedding of blood here, but the collective effervescence is translated in another manner. Among his people, before the body is definitely interred, it is exposed upon a platform placed in the branches of a tree; it is left there to decompose slowly, until nothing remains but the bones. Then these are gathered together and, with the exception of the humerus, they are placed inside an ant-hill. The humerus is wrapped up in a bark box, which is decorated in different manners. The box is then brought to camp, amid the cries and groans of the women. During the following days, they celebrate a series of totemic rites, concerning the totem of the deceased and the mythical history of the ancestors from whom the clan is descended. When all these ceremonies have been terminated, they proceed to the closing rite. A trench one foot deep and fifteen feet long is dug in the field of the ceremony. A design representing the totem of the deceased and certain spots where the ancestor stopped is made on the ground a little distance from it. Near this design, a little ditch is dug in the ground. Ten decorated men then advance, one behind another, and with their hands crossed behind their heads and their legs wide apart they stand astraddle the trench. At a given signal, the women run from the camp in a profound silence; when they are near, they form in Indian file, the last one holding in her hands the box containing the humerus. Then, after throwing themselves on the ground, they advance on their hands and knees, and pass all along the trench, between the legs of the men. The scene shows a state of great sexual excitement.

• From The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)

  Both proceed from the same principle that death demands the shedding of blood. The only difference is that in one case the victims are the relatives, while in the other they are strangers. We do not have to treat especially of the vendetta, which belongs rather to the study of juridic institutions; but it should be pointed out, nevertheless, how it is connected with the rites of mourning, whose end it announces. [1253] In certain societies, the mourning is terminated by a ceremony whose effervescence reaches or surpasses that produced by the inaugural ceremonies. Among the Arunta, this closing rite is called Urpmilchima . Spencer and Gillen assisted at two of these rites. One was celebrated in honour of a man, the other of a woman. Here is the description they give of the latter. [1254] They commence by making some ornaments of a special sort, called Chimurilia by the men and Aramurilia by the women. With a kind of resin, they fixed small animal bones, which had previously been gathered and set aside, to locks of hair furnished by the relatives of the dead woman. These are then attached to one of the head-bands which women ordinarily wear and the feathers of black cockatoos and parrots are added to it. When these preparations are completed, the women assemble in their camp. They paint their bodies different colours, according to their degree of kinship with the deceased. After being embraced by one another for some ten minutes, while uttering uninterrupted groans, they set out for the tomb. At a certain distance, they meet a brother by blood of the dead woman, who is accompanied by some of his tribal brothers. Everybody sits down on the ground, and the lamentations recommence. A pitchi [1255] containing the Chimurilia is then presented to the elder brother, who presses it against his stomach; they say that this is a way of lessening his sorrow. They take out one of the Chimurilia and the dead woman's mother puts it on her head for a little while; then it is put back into the pitchi , which each of the other men presses against his breast, in his turn. Finally, the brother puts the Chimurilia on the heads of two elder sisters and they set out again for the tomb. On the way, the mother throws herself on the ground several times, and tries to slash her head with a pointed stick. Every time, the other women pick her up, and seem to take care that she does not hurt herself too much. When they arrive at the tomb, she throws herself on the knoll and endeavours to destroy it with her hands, while the other women literally dance upon her.

• From The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)

  Spencer and Gillen knew one old woman who had not spoken for over twenty-four years. [1240] The ceremony which we have described opens a long series of rites which succeed one another for weeks and even for months. During the days which follow, they are renewed in various forms. Groups of men and women sit on the ground, weeping and lamenting, and kissing each other at certain moments. These ritual kissings are repeated frequently during the period of mourning. It seems as though men felt a need of coming close together and communicating most closely; they are to be seen holding to each other and wound together so much as to make one single mass, from which loud groans escape. [1241] Meanwhile, the women commence to lacerate their heads again, and, in order to intensify the wounds they make, they even go so far as to burn them with the points of fiery sticks. [1242] Practices of this sort are general in all Australia. The funeral rites, that is, the ritual cares given to the corpse, the way in which it is buried, etc., change with different tribes, [1243] and in a single tribe they vary with the age, sex and social importance of the individual. [1244] But the real ceremonies of mourning repeat the same theme everywhere; the variations are only in the details. Everywhere we find this same silence interrupted by groans, [1245] the same obligation of cutting the hair and beard, [1246] or of covering one's head with pipe-clay or cinders, or perhaps even with excrements; [1247] everywhere, finally, we find this same frenzy for beating one's self, lacerating one's self and burning one's self. In central Victoria, "when death visits a tribe there is great weeping and lamentation amongst the women, the elder portion of whom lacerate their temples with their nails. The parents of the deceased lacerate themselves fearfully, especially if it be an only son whose loss they deplore. The father beats and cuts his head with a tomahawk until he utters bitter groans, the mother sits by the fire and burns her breasts and abdomen with a small fire-stick. Sometimes the burns thus inflicted are so severe as to cause death." [1248] According to an account of Brough Smyth, here is what happens in one of the southern tribes of the same state. As the body is lowered into the grave, "the widow begins her sad ceremonies. She cuts off her hair above her forehead, and becoming frantic, seizes fire-sticks, and burns her breasts, arms, legs and thighs. She seems to delight in the self-inflicted torture. It would be rash and vain to interrupt her. When exhausted, and when she can hardly walk, she yet endeavours to kick the embers of the fire, and to throw them about.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  As the time drew on to the day when the boat was to start, Sophy grew thoughtful. I got her a pretty corn-colored dress that set off her beauty as golden sunlight a lovely woodland, and when she thanked and hugged me, I wanted to put my hand up her clothes for she had made a mischievous, naughty remark that amused me and reminded me we had driven all the previous day and I had not had her. To my surprise she stopped me: “I’ve not washed since we came in”, she explained. “Do you wash so often?” “Shuah,” she replied, fixing me. “Why?” I asked, searching her regard. “Because I’m afraid of nigger-smell,” she flung out passionately— “What nonsense!” I exclaimed. “’Tain’t either”, she contradicted me angrily, “My mother took me once to negro-church and I near choked: I never went again; I just couldn’t: when they get hot, they stink—pah!” and she shook her head and made a face in utter disgust and contempt. “That’s why you goin’ to leave me”, she added after a long pause, with tears in her voice; “if it wasn’t for that damned nigger blood in me, I’d never leave you: I’d just go on with you as servant or anything: ah God, how I love you and how lonely this Topsy’ll be!” and the tears ran down her quivering face. “If I were only all white or all black,” she sobbed: “I’m so unhappy!” My heart bled for her. If it had not been for the memory of Smith’s disdain, I would have given in and taken her with me. As it was, I could only do my best to console her by saying: “a couple of years, Sophy, and I’ll return; they’ll pass quickly: I’ll write you often, dear!” But Sophy knew better and when the last night came, she surpassed herself. It was warm and we went early to bed: “it’s my night!” she said: “you just let me show you, you dear! I don’t want you to go after any whitish girl in those Islands till you get to China and you won’t go with those yellow, slit-eyed girls—that’s why I love you so, because you keep yourself for those you like:—but you’re naughty to like so many—ma man!” and she kissed me with passion: she let me have her almost without response, but after the first orgasm she gripped my sex and milked me, and afterwards mounting me made me thrill again and again till I was speechless and like children we fell asleep in each other’s arms, weeping for the parting on the morrow.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  We passed the whole day together and when he heard how I spent my days in casual reading and occasional speaking and my Topsy-turvey nights, he urged me to throw up the law and go to Europe to make myself a real scholar and thinker. But I could not give up Sophy and my ultra-pleasant life. So I resisted, told him he overrated me: I’d easily be the best advocate in the State, I said, and make a lot of money and then I’d go back and do Europe and study as well. He warned me that I must choose between God and Mammon; I retorted lightly that Mammon and my senses gave me much that God denied: “I’ll serve both”, I cried, but he shook his head. “I’m finished, Frank”, he declared at length, “but I’d regret life less if I knew that you would take up the work I once hoped to accomplish, won’t you?” I couldn’t resist his appeal: “All right”, I said, after choking down my tears, “give me a few months and I’ll go, round the world first and then to Germany to study.” He drew me to him and kissed me on the forehead: I felt it as a sort of consecration. A day or so afterwards he took train for Denver and I felt as if the sun had gone out of my life. I had little to do in Lawrence at this time except read at large and I began to spend a couple of hours every day in the town library. Mrs. Trask, the librarian, was the widow of one of the early settlers who had been brutally murdered during the Quantrell raid when Missourian bandits “shot up” the little town of Lawrence in a last attempt to turn Kansas into a slave-owning state. Mrs. Trask was a rather pretty little woman who had been made librarian to compensate her in some sort for the loss of her husband. She was well-read in American literature and I often took her advice as to my choice of books. She liked me, I think, for she was invariably kind to me and I owe her many pleasant hours and some instruction. After Smith had gone West I spent more and more time in the library for my law-work was becoming easier to me every hour. One day about a month after Smith had left, I went into the library and could find nothing enticing to read. Mrs. Trask happened to be passing and I asked her: “What am I to read?” “Have you read any of that?” she replied pointing to Bohn’s edition of Emerson in two volumes. “He’s good!” “I saw him in Concord”, I said, “but he was deaf and made little impression on me.” “He’s the greatest American thinker”, she retorted, “and you ought to read him.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “What a pity, Charlie!” I cried, “you’ll get more than a thousand dollars from your share of the cattle: I’ve told Bob, that I intend to share equally with all of you: this money must go back; but the thousand shall be sent to your mother I promise you:”— “Not on your life!”, cried the dying man, lifting himself up on one elbow: “This is my money: it shan’t go back to that oily sneak thief”: the effort had exhausted him; even in the dim light we could see that his face was drawn and gray: he must have understood this himself for I could just hear his last words: “Good-bye, boys!” his head fell back, his mouth opened: the brave boyish spirit was gone. I couldn’t control my tears: the phrase came to me: “I better could have lost a better man,” for Charlie was at heart a good fellow! I left Bent to carry back the money and arrange for Charlie’s burial, leaving Jo to guard the body: in an hour I was again with Bob and had told him everything. Ten days later we were in Kansas City where I was surprised by unexpected news. My second brother Willie, six years older than I was, had come out to America and hearing of me in Kansas had located himself in Lawrence as a real-estate agent; he wrote asking me to join him. This quickened my determination to have nothing more to do with cowpunching. Cattle too, we found, had fallen in price and we were lucky to get ten dollars or so a head for our bunch which made a poor showing from the fact that the Indians had netted all the best. There was about six thousand dollars to divide: Jo got five hundred dollars and Bent, Bob, Charlie’s mother and myself divided the rest. Bob told me I was a fool: I should keep it all and go down south again: but what had I gained by my two years of cowpunching? I had lost money and caught malarial fever; I had won a certain knowledge of ordinary men and their way of living and had got more than a smattering of economics and of medicine, but I was filled with an infinite disgust for a merely physical life. What was I to do now? I’d see Willie and make up my mind. * * * STUDENT LIFE AND LOVE. Chapter IX.