Being Present

Last week I attended a workshop on advance care planning including a viewing of being mortal all focused on dying well through planning, understanding and communication. Later in the week I conducted a workshop on suicide prevention, I was half way through my talk when I was struck with the irony:

Everyone has the right to die with dignity and support and have their wishes respected

unless their wishes are to die ahead of schedule then we need to stop them.

While I don’t have profound answers to our life long struggle with and against death, it gave me another window into the perplexity of it all. In the end however the answer to both preventing suicide and peacefully supporting inevitable passing is

be present.

Its that simple

Okay, yes, there are tons of unique complexities in logistics, relationships and emotions in each individual situation that no formula check list of two word cliche can fully attend to. However, being present, showing up, sitting quietly and listening without judgement is an enormous first step. None of us knows what the journey of our life will hold and when our last day will be. We have heard the old cliche’ of living each day as if it is your last. I encourage you this week to take that a step further and treat each interaction as if it might be your last meeting with that person, tell them that they are important to you, what you appreciate about them, smile, make eye contact and hug a smidge longer. What is it going to hurt?  How many ways could it help?

I’m going to keep this short because this message is important but I will do another post soon on advance care planning and on suicide awareness/prevention. Like my fb page or email me to get on the mailing list for future updates.