Beat Goes On

No matter what happens, the beat of life continues. The pulse. The action. The people keep moving. Business continues. Schools hold classes. Food is grown and sold, distributed. People eat the food. Clothes are made and worn. Other necessities of life are needed, and that demand is supplied. In basic ways, no matter the circumstances, life continues.

Look upon graphic records of your family tree. Who was born where and when, who they married, the children brought into the world, who they each married, had kids with and so on. Life goes on. In war. In peace. In blooming economies and dead or dying ones.

That fact of existence of others is the core point. They live and thus need. The business of living builds economies, small perhaps, but interlacing with others to become national economic systems. Then international trading happens, and soon the global economy becomes apparent. Whether or not we pay attention to these things, existence of one begets existence of another, begets needs which form supplies to fill needs and so on.

A significant other is lost. No longer with us. A change of huge proportions is called for by the survivors. Little by little a new normal forms. The loss is accounted for, felt, soothed and respected. Life, however, demands survivors to live and breathe. That fact alone makes for a new formation of social being. We structure our daily routines to meet basic demands. In time we expand those needs and demands thus building a new life routine. That is the pulse of life. It continues to draw us forward.

The loss of a significant other is accommodated in this way little by little. The role of memory finds a perch in the new normal. It is consulted. It helps form perspectives. It is a real part of life. New memories from experience emerge. Our experience expands but now informed by the past.

Survivors often wonder how life goes on with such normality. Don’t others realize the enormity of this change? No? Why not? Oh, yes, they aren’t affected as much as I by the loss. That does not diminish the meaning of the loss, just the number of affected others. I get it. They don’t have to get it. It is mine to carry forward.

And so it goes. One by one we exist, survive and live onward. Those lost along this winding way remain a part of our past which informs our present. Bit by bit we build the future with all of this mattering. It is a basic fact of life.

The mystery is how we could have not known this without the loss. Hmm.

November 27, 2023

 

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