tropikgal2

I want to quote something from a book I am reading right now. It is something that Morrie Schwartz, a professor at Brandeis who died of Lou Gehrig's disease, said to his friend, Mitch Albom, while he was in the agony of the disease:
...."What I'm doing now," he continued, his eyes still closed, "is detaching myself from the experience."
Detaching yourself?
"Yes, detaching myself.....You know what the Buddhists say? 'Don't cling to things, because everything is impermenant.' "
But wait, I said. Aren't you always talking about experiencing life? All the good emotions, all the bad ones? How can you do that if you're detached?
"Detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it."
I'm lost.
"Take any emotion--love for a person, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to be detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.
"But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over you head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'Alright, I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I'm free to detach from that emotion for a moment'.....
" I know you think this is just about dying, but it's like I keep telling you. When you learn how to die, you learn how to live."

And with that, I am going to bed! Good night!!