"Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves, ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim" -Vicki Harrison
A few months ago, I read a really interesting analogy involving grief and pain, and it has stuck with me ever since.
Imagine a closed box with a button on the inside of it. When you experience some sort of painful experience, imagine placing a large, bouncing ball inside of the box. The button represents the pain or grief, and the ball represents the experience. When the event first happens, the ball in the box is large, and it's constantly hitting that button. You might not be able to go a few hours, or even minutes, without being reminded of the pain. As time passes, the ball gets smaller and smaller, hitting the button less frequently. Years may pass, and you might feel like you may be completely passt the event and the grief, but occasionally that ball will still hit the button, and the pain will still come.
There is no "one-size-fits-all" coping mechanism since everyone deals with grief in their own way, and the old saying that time heals all wounds isn't always true. Time can sometimes leave a person angry and bitter. When one doesn't know how to cope with an initial tragedy, negative events that follow can dig someone deeper and deeper into a hole. I believe it's important to learn how to go through a tragedy, and not necessarily how to get past it.
Whenever something particularly disastrous happens in my life, I'm always left anxiously wondering, "How in the world am I going to get past this? How am I going to get my normal life back after this?" The truth is, I'm not sure if we ever truly get over some tragedies that occur in our lives. We adjust, and we cope, and we try to keep moving forward. The tragedies that we live through tend to shape us, and we realize that normality is not a static environment. Unfortunately, grief and pain is just a part of the human experience. It's important to realize that while we have no control over the bad things that happen to us, we are in complete control in how we chose to react and deal with them.
In honor of "The Lion King" being released next week, here's a quote that I've always loved from it:
