Monthly Archives: March 2016

spirituality

You don’t “deserve” anything

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Writing about what we do or don’t deserve is a tough one as there is this pretty intense paradox around this concept. What we deserve, though, makes sense within the context of spiritual growth and maturity.

On one hand, in the world of self help, self care, and self honoring, I hear often, “Do this for yourself. You deserve it!” From taking a hot bath, to getting desert, to getting a pedicure, to taking a nap… there is an underlying sense that treating myself to something nurturing is good in a life where I may not do enough to look after my own needs. It is very good to take care of our own needs, but thinking of it in terms of “deserving” may not be the most helpful, especially when considering the other side of the spectrum.

Our  Western society has an entitlement sickness. Most people can list off plenty of “rights” that affirm that the world is treating them fairly. I hear things like, “I worked hard for my money. I deserve to spend it where I please.” Or, “I deserve to know the truth about what is wrong with my loved one.” Or, “I’ve been working hard, I deserve some peace and quiet.” People have the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to have religious freedom, the right to pursue happiness, the right to equality, the right to justice, the right to use the land for their own purposes, and on and on. Inherent in being human means we have certain “unalienable” rights.

entitlement3So some of our rights, some of the things we “deserve,” are good and some are not. Where I think the maturity, or lack thereof, shows itself is in the claiming of what we deserve. There is a time and a place on the spiritual journey where we feel the need to claim our rights and we need to claim the things we deserve. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we have a sense that there are others who would claim rights, freedoms, and things they deserve that would take away from our own. If this is the case, then there is inherently a problem… because the things that are rights should not take away from the rights of others. The whole paradigm is inherently limited and dualistic.

As we mature on the spiritual journey, we come to find that claim what we deserve and what rights we have is a useless, and probably detrimental, pursuit. At some point, we realize that more than anything, we are actually in a significant debt to the world herself and to others. What living being consumes so many natural resources to live without giving back to the natural order of things? Even in our deaths, we burn our bodies, embalm our bodies, or bury them in caskets which keep us from giving more life to the land! How many living things have to die in order for us to live, even for one month, let alone for 80 years? The earth doesn’t need us as humans to continue to thrive. We, in our living, carry with us a significant debt to the greater Life we are a part of. At some point on the spiritual life, we begin to recognize our place in the order of things. We begin to realize it consciously and then we begin to live it.

With a sense of our debt to Life, we begin to live differently. Things like the equality of all humans is a given, so we don’t have to claim our right to racial equality or economic equality. It becomes more than this though. Where does humanity land in its equality withentitlement all of creation? When we begin asking these questions the “rights” and “freedoms” and thingS we think we “deserve” seem to be such a useless hill to die on. So small, so temporary. Again, there is a place on the journey for making these claims but at some point they simply become unimportant.

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chaplaincy, dying

Why is it so difficult to die?

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I wish this were an easy answer, but unfortunately there are countless reasons why people have so much trouble dying. There are a few things that I am fairly certain about and that I have found that resonate with patients and family members. More often than not I find that people really DO have a difficulty with dying. Whether it be fear, denial, anxiety, or just avoidance, there is an underlying difficulty with dying.

Many people aren’t so much afraid of being dead, as they are of dying. I say this with intention, and I offer this to patients, in order to make a distinction. I have read in numerous places that it is best to think of living until we are dead. If we don’t then we could get depressed or think that our life is over as soon as we admit to dying. Think about it this way. “Dying,” an active tense word, is very different from the words like “dead” (adjective) and “be killed” (passive tense). There is no passive tense of “dying.” It is active, and so there for something we DO. It is something we live in, participate in, and include others in. So how do people want to go about their dying time? This is a good question to ask of people and to reflect on ourselves. We don’t just live until we are dead. These are the people who want to go out in their sleep or want to end their lives prematurely. There is no active participation in their dying there.

For many, unlike our ancestors, being around death and dying can be a very foreign experience. It used to be that loved ones would die at home attended to by family members in the upstairs bedroom. Now it is so often in a hospital or nursing home behind closed doors. The announcement comes from the RN or the doctor and the family comes in after a person has died. So many are not familiar with the signs of dying. They think a dying person may be on the road to improvement when they wake from days of sleeping and not eating and want to tell stories. These moments of clarity are often part of the dying process. Dying also is a very personal experience, different for each person, and something that each person can only go through once. If a dying person doesn’t share what it is like with their loved ones, they offer little of help to the next generation when it is their turn. But people are afraid of causing too much hardship to their loved ones by talking about it too much.

Dying in the hospital is very difficult because health care professionals are trained to cure, to heal, and to “fix.” In and of itself, this is not a bad thing at all. But when it comes to dying, there is no “fixing.” I have heard doctors say that having a palliative care team meet with a family is “giving up too early.” I have seen many many times doctors and nurses shy away from using the “D word” with families when the writing was clearly on the wall. Many will say a person who is accepting their dying is “giving up” or someone who is feeling sad about saying good bye is “depressed.” Too, too often do doctors trying treatment after treatment until a patient, who wants to die at home ends up unconscious while still hoping along with their family that they are going to “pull through.” Or a patient holds off  going home on hospice because a doctor or social worker feels trying out rehab first might be good, only to die the next day at the nursing home. I tell patients if they want to be an active participant in their dying experience, join hospice while they still have the capacity to choose for themselves.

If we can just begin to see how much death is a part of life. Dying is not a “bad” thing. It is a beautiful, sacred, natural thing. Not to say it is a “good” thing either. It just is. It is part of what happens to all healthy, mature, and connected to the earth beings. Going from living to dead is going around this natural process. As Stephen Jenkinson wonders, “How connected is someone to their life when they have to be told they are dying?”

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