staring-at-the-sun-yalom

36 staring at the sun
for the first time, for his young wife. He feels pity for
them, for the suffering he has inflicted, and ultimately
dies not in pain but in the joy of intense compassion.
Tolstoy’s story is not only a literary masterpiece
but also a powerful instructive lesson and, indeed, is
often required reading for those being trained to offer
comfort to the dying.
If such a mindfulness of being is conducive to important
personal change, then how do you move out of
the mode of everydayness into the more change-conducive
mode? Not from simply wishing it or bearing down and
gritting your teeth. Instead, it usually takes an urgent
or irreversible experience to awaken a person and jerk
him or her out of the everyday mode into the ontological
one. This is what I call the awakening experience.
But where are the awakening experiences for us in
our everyday life, for those of us not facing terminal
cancer, a firing squad, or a visit from the Ghost of the
Future? In my experience, the major catalysts for an
awakening experience are urgent life events:
Grief at the loss of someone you love
Life-threatening illness
The breakup of an intimate relationship
Some major life milestone, such as a big birthday
(fifty, sixty, seventy, and so on)
Cataclysmic trauma, such as a fire, rape,
or robbery
Children’s leaving home (the empty nest)