Last week’s community conversation, Dying to talk – facing death, embracing life, went far and wide. What stood out for me was the sacred energy that formed as we connected in our mortal humanness. Death and dying impacts us all and so it connects us all, as humans. Many of the community have experienced loss, and death is around the corner for us all.
We talked about the range of emotions that can be associated with death, the wisdom that our feelings and emotions hold and the discomfort of open emotion in settings where professionalism is expected. This makes me wonder how we have come to create workplaces where our very humanness is denied?
We also explored the connection between death and endings. To me, this aspect of our discussion connected with our previous conversation about busyness. So much is being talked about change in the world today and yet, the relentless busyness and the exhaustion this creates seem to be anti-change. How powerful would it be if, instead of layering change initiative work onto existing work, we just stopped some stuff and allowed something new to emerge in the space.
The true opportunity that lies in facing death, dying and endings is transformational, both personally and organisationally. As we face into endings there is rich opportunity for learning about ourselves and the systems we are part of.
I end this post with a quote shared in our conversation by Joan, from Angeles Arrien.
We travel through life with two companions: death and destiny.
Death continually asks us, ‘are you using the great gift of life well?’
Destiny whispers, ‘are you doing what you’ve come here to do?’