As individual as our thumbprints so are our stories. In a sense our stories are karmic. Meaning they relate our past and consequences of our actions and sometimes our inactions. Since the election we have been crossing the desert of existential void. We each have formed and identity connected to each other. It does not matter if we have loved each other or disliked the other. An identity, a description of ourselves, is formed with each meeting. One of the most painful happenings in our lives is when part of our identity is taken away with death or departure of someone we know or an ideal we subscribe to tossed out.

I am a fan of Vicktro Frankl. His book “Man’s Search For Meaning,” has given me insight into my own grief and loss. Frankl lost his wife, his parents and writing during the holocaust. As a psychiatrist he began helping those in the concentration camp. He found what I have come to know is my strength. He found those who survive do because they found meaning and purpose in their life. Those who survived have a passionate love for a person or idea. He did not quantify this as having to be a kind of love, simply the ability to love and give their life meaning.

I don’t believe there is a punishing supreme being that penalizes and directs the course of my life. I don’t believe the universe is chaotic and without meaning or patterns of life. It is my experience that we give our life meaning by our very existence and our willingness to embrace our being as more than a frenzied second in the annuals of time.

With all loss and passing comes a sense of void. A dark place that is not familiar to us, a void. Somehow we are connected to this void and we inherently know this is an existential experience. In all religious texts, all stories written by great authors there is a sense of having to cross the sands of the existential void. The night of darkness where we cry out take me from this pain, and give me an answer why. In Christianity and many other religions this is seen as the 40 years in the desert spent by mosses, the 40 days spent by Jesus.  In each case the metaphors/archetypes bring the protagonist to a point of self-realization. Realizing that they alone can give meaning and love to their life.

In ontological terms this is the time when, we as individuals realize we alone are responsible for our life. How we react to life and accept our actions and reactions. Where we realize that like Job in the Bible we find we are indeed existential in nature connected to all life and therefore our brother’s keeper. Meaning we are responsible for all that appears in our consciousness and our reactions to it.

Like Joseph, of the many-colored coat, we arise above the land of blaming others or needing a supreme being and realize we control our destiny by our actions and reactions to the world around us.

Each of us handles grief and the leavings in life differently. There is no correct way, no happy way. Grief is a natural part of life. It can teach us compassion, love, and give us a hint of our very being. Like birth, death must be given a witness in our life in our consciousness. To give witness to death and birth is to acknowledge our very existential being, our connection to all life. It teaches us we are capable of great love and that each moment of life is ours to give meaning and purpose.

Suzanne Deakins is a High Watch Mentor, her books may be found on amazon.com She is also the publisher of One Spirit Press and The Q Press. She may be reached via email at suzannedeakins@gmail.com