Dear Anita,

Its been a long time since we last spoke.  There has been a few occurrences since then – first of which, my friend from medical school passed away.  It was tragic and sudden, and a true shame.  I feel for his young wife and son. Without going into too much detail about the death etc,  I do want to write – now – what I observed of my own self.

I notice, that about 2 years ago, I mentioned to you that it was hard for me to feel true emotion.  At this time we did talk about joy.  I think about joy a lot, and it is in my opinion, that joy and such true positive feelings are the hardest to conquer – after being numb.

Yet, “feeling” takes time and it is in a stepwise fashion.  I truly did feel for my friend, and his wife.  Of course grieving in this form is quite different than your everyday emotions.  But, what I noticed is that my feelings were not clouded.  I was able to be present – sad, disturbed, angry.  I noticed how if my mother was in the picture, the whole story would go another direction – how terrible she would say, how sad for him, look at all these evil people running around everywhere just fine, and poor him.  so and so did this and that daily and still alive, look at this persons bad luck.

the entire thing would be about OTHERS. And I notice – that when we are so so caught up in OTHERS we never process what is going on in our own self and own lives.  It is asking – what is TRULY happening to ME. no, not to her or her, or him, but to ME.

I will make it a point to ask myself this more often—hopefully regularly.