Some Thoughts on Grief and Holding our Moments Close 

Hello Friends,

And just like that, here we are in the first weeks of 2024. Last year seems to have flown by. But don’t they always?

When I was young, my mother would say that the years move faster and faster as you get older. I think she was right. And I wonder now if perhaps it is supposed to be this way. 

When we are young the days, the months, the seasons — they seem to go on forever. A year feels positively endless. An eternity. And I think as a result, when one year turns to the next as children, we excitedly turn toward imagining the possibilities that are to come.

And while we don’t lose this entirely as adults, I think at a certain point the year’s turning brings with it a kind of nostalgia. A longing even, for what has now come and gone. And with this, at least for me, a desire to hold those moments-now-memories as close as possible. And to be as present as I can for all those yet to be had.

It’s like this turning back towards the preciousness of our past sets free a kind of preemptive grief. An existential ache at the recognition that all we hold most dear is utterly impermanent. 

I always say though that grief is one of the most transcendent states we can access as humans.  When allowed in, it opens us. It expands us. And in my experience, it has a mysterious way of cutting through everything that does not matter and connecting us only to what does.

When I look back on 2023, there are so many moments I wish I had held closer. Moments I missed or took for granted. Opportunities to love more fully or give more freely. And unrealized windows for connection, intimacy, and vulnerability.

I don’t say these things to criticize myself, or to judge, or to blame. I say them because it brings awareness. It helps me to see that I missed these moments because I wasn’t really there. Not because of physical absence but because of lack of presence. My inner dialogue was too loud and distracting. My fear or insecurity or desire to control was too imposing.

But the moment is quiet. It is subtle. And if we want to experience it, we must meet it on these terms.

This reminds me of a peculiar experience I had recently. It was in the early morning hours on the day after Christmas. I was surrounded by some of the people I hold most dear, sitting around the amber glow of a basement furnace. We were sharing, laughing, and just enjoying being together. I couldn’t have designed a more perfect moment. 

And yet, for some reason I could sense that I wasn’t all the way there. Like there was a wall between me and the joy and connection happening all around me.

It was pretty painful, and honestly kind of annoying. But something inspired me — grace perhaps — to open myself to the block I was feeling. To just let it be there without any need to fix or change it, or even understand or label it. 

What followed was at once moving and heartbreaking, illuminating and sobering. What I found was grief. It was a grief for the moment as it was happening in real time. It was like I wanted to reach through the wall I had constructed and yell, “Get me out of here!” 

I wanted so badly for that moment to fill me so I could savor all of its subtleties and tiny details. So that I could trace its lines and textures into the contours of my memory. It was like I wanted to merge fully and completely with it, and anything short would simply not be enough.

And. It. Was. So. Beautiful.

I don’t know why it seems there is a part of us that wants us to remain separate. That erects walls and blockades to protect us from some of the most meaningful moments in our lives, seemingly unexpectedly and without cause.

One of my teachers, Sheryl Paul, says that grief lives at the root of nearly all of our mental and emotional turmoil. She says fear or anxiety or distraction manifests on the surface as a way to protect us from the infinitely more painful emotion underneath, which is grief.

I think our psyche must know on an archetypal level how fleeting each and every moment truly is. And in an effort to protect us from the grief and anguish that lives inside this recognition, it keeps us safely separate by skimming the surface of our life. The trouble is, when we do this, we are robbed of our own presence and miss the moments that when let in fully transform our lives forever.

I think part of the reason we start looking back into the past a bit more as adults is because it helps us to see more clearly how we would like to move forward. 

And so for me, as I sit just beyond the threshold between one year and the next, it feels so clear that all I want is to hold my moments just a tiny bit closer. To break down those walls that “protect” me from my own presence. And to let 2024 be the year that I stop turning away from that preemptive grief and instead let it crack me wide open to let the beauty of each devastatingly fleeting moment come pouring in. 

I can’t think of a better resolution for the new year. And perhaps even more poignantly, I can’t think of a more meaningful way to live the rest of my life, as it comes barreling towards me faster and faster every year.