And Mourn Awhile

Mourning is more than grief for the passing of a beloved person, it is also a spiritual tool that can lead us toward a better, deeper, and more real understanding of ourselves.  Since last night I have been in mourning, for people lost and gone of whom I possess only a memory, or ability wasted and withered, and of the increase of poverty at the expense of my ego.  Is it right to mourn the last?  We shall see.

Mourning is not just sadness, or a regression to depression, it is an active state wherein you mourn and know that it is for a reason, and it will end.  Sections of life that we have put behind us and never really closed, sometimes require a certain mourning process for those life experiences to be able to close.  Without the mourning, the door is still open, the pain is not dealt with, and our minds are prey to the hook of sadness that is the memory.  When you have mourned, you have shut the door.

Skill, talent, ambitions, dreams, all are things we might mourn if we have lost them, walked away from them, betrayed them, or undervalued some skill, some ambition.  They can come back to us again and again, always reaching through that not quite closed door, and hook us into the sadness that leads to depression and regret -- worse yet, to bitterness.

People, mentors, guides, friends, those who pass through our lives without our realizing their true value and worth -- they too are mourned.  Perhaps a person is tied in your memory to your failed ambition, or your angry rejection of a talent, or even your refusal to reach for a dream; that person should be mourned, they stood with you, and for you, but the ability to see clearly was gone.  And then, you mourn, for you had someone wonderful with you and did not know it in time to honor them. 

In my case, the loss of income, of ability to earn my own money, to stand up for all of mass, are small humiliations that lead me ultimately to understanding my poverty, and from there, to my total dependence upon God.  Even here we must mourn, for without the mourning we had not completely shut the door to the past.  When someone says I'm sad about something, we should tell them to mourn for it openly, and then be done with it.  

Mourning has a beginning, it also has an end.