Life Is the Exception
When people or pets die, we feel the sadness that they no longer get to experience our year-to-year reality. Our day-to-day seems totally stable. We feel pain that our dying father-in-law will never meet our unborn kids.
Of course this pace of life is experientially real, but in times of pain it helps to remember that life itself is actually the exception. For most of existence you’ll be unborn or dead. At the cosmic scale, it’s as if a whole person’s life is just a day. Have you had a good one?
Your grandparents died yesterday, your parents died today, you die tomorrow, and your thrice great grandkids die by the end of the week. This mindshift helps. I am not owed 100 years, I was granted today. It becomes less about you and more about the unbroken chain.