Kiss your life

For the umpteenth time I’ve just seen a man suffer

shockingly from the irreparable loss of his wife.

Rebellious and irreconcilable, he made me think of

another man who once sat here before me, many

years ago. At first he looked like a block of granite, with

a vacant stare, a stone-hard mask for a face, with a

menacing expression. Between long silence, the

words which came from his mouth sounded just like

swear words, “It can’t be. It musn’t be. My wife is

dead. Killed. I can’t feel it. I’m going to kill myself…

I potter about, can’t work, go through bottles of

sleeping pills. Nothing helps’’.

‘’Try to accept it’’, I say softly.

I can’t! I won’t’’ he blurts out, I’m putting an

end to it.’’

Sometimes life treats people dreadfully.

Arthur Miller wrote in one of his plays: ‘’ …I had a

child and even in the dream I saw that the child was my

life; and it was an idiot. And I wept, and a hundred

times I ran away, but each time I came back, it had the same dreadful face. Until I thought, if only I could kiss

it, whatever in it was my own,perhaps I could rest.

And I bent to its broken face, and it was horrible, but I

kissed it.’’

Yes, I believe that eventually you must take your life in

your arms-your life just as it is. Accept it, kiss it, no

matter how heavy or how hard it seems. If you’ve once

kissed it, it will be different, bearable.

But don’t have any illusions. Happiness is no

‘continuous performance’.Real happiness in life comes

and goes and usually doesn’t last very long. The rest of

the time you dream of it and wait for it. Kiss your life.

Accept it, just as it is. Today. Now. So that those

moments of happiness you’re waiting for don’t pass

you by.