When I was a kid, one of the first baby boomers (which gives you a clue to my advancing age) cash registers and adding machines had hand cranks and when the power went out, even the garage could dispense gasoline (petrol as we called it!) using a hand pump … at least, for those lucky families who HAD a car … of which we were sadly not one!
Not so anymore. Modern advances in electronics have turned most appliances and machines into sleek microprocessor-controlled wonders of high technology. We depend on our computers, tablets and phones for social media and modern communication. Imagine your life today without electricity to run the apparatus that controls our world.
A few years ago, it happened. An overload in a transformer triggered a chain reaction that caused a major power outage in much of the Eastern part of the Canada and the USA. People had to manage without power for days … modern life as we know it ground to a halt. No TV, no internet, no technology or social media. I personally enjoyed it from the comfort of my home … I saw the stars from my back yard without the light pollution from street and city illumination, and the propane BBQ served us well. But for many others in different circumstances, away from home or travelling, it was a difficult and challenging experience. Thankfully it happened in the summer otherwise the effects of cold and winter might have triggered a much worse scenario and even a major disaster.
What I have described above is not unlike what people feel when their world is turned upside down by bereavement, illness or personal disaster.
When familiar things become uncertain it is easy to become confused and paralyzed into inaction. But a little bit of education and preparation can go a long way toward reducing one’s personal sense of fear and helplessness. As Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
This is why Grief Journey does what it does. While it is anyone’s guess whether our world will be plunged into a return to the dark ages by terror, planetary disruption, exhausting of natural resources or a host of other possibilities, there is one thing I do know for sure….
…. Every one of us is going to experience losses that will affect OUR world and make it look like a very different place.
After a death or personal disaster, the challenge is how to SURVIVE, how to LIVE BEYOND the situation that has brought about the change that has affected our individual world.
Grief Journey has many resources to help people prepare for, work through and eventually overcome the challenges of bereavement. Our goal is to help empower people like yourself not just to come through these challenges when they affect your own like, but to enable good people like yourself to have the resources to help and assist others who may be struggling and in need of an understanding heart and a helping hand.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “The future belongs to those who prepare for it.”