Great piece. I feel that these things should be aired far more and brought into the focus of our daily life. Thank you.

We all experience loss as inevitably as we breathe, and we all experience death, both our own and, usually, of people dear to us. I see death as still carrying the taboo of pre-Christian thinking. That is a shame after two thousand odd years! This is not an issue that needs to be inextricably linked with an afterlife. Rather to say that death is both natural, inevitable and essential for the continuance of life. Death is what teaches Life to survive. It is the mechanism that adapts life to the changing world it lives in. This fact still leaves complete freedom to give it meaning, be-it afterlife, reincarnation, or finality. Meaning is something only we as individuals can give.

Like you, I have also thought about Kubler-Ross’s stages and in particular the final one. There has been some good research on her stages recently (Maciejewski, Zhang, Block, Prigerson, Journal of the American Medical Association. 2007). But all concern is with the short term (6 month- 1 year) of grief. In my experience I find the need for a further and final stage. There is a common label for this: Reconciliation. For me, Acceptance dscriibes a clarity of focus on the changed reality, however the idea of “moving on” and also “letting go” I find problematic. For me it is something akin to denial and consigns the value of the past experience to a history the concept of which I find untenable. History exists only in our imagination and memory, yet to lose it carries dreadful consequences. For me, reconciliation is the process by which the lessons and feelings that we gained, and through ownership of we could be said to mature, become a living part of our present, informing us and guiding us into new relationships and paths.

sincerely
robin

generally, it could have been either of the other two, as their campaign “focus”‘ (foci?) have meandered considerably. but neither meaninfully references the Constitution or forefathers such as jefferson, and both have helped transfer considerable power to the executive branch.

i LOVE that this was written by a student. i LOVE the level of engagement at that age.

suggested reading: henry david thoreau, paulo coelho, and my upcoming book.

This is nazar, from Madurai, India, working as Volunteer in-charge for a not-for profit hospital. I read your answer to a question regarding “volunteering” in Linkedin. Practical ! Can you help me? by referring people interested to serve as volunteers in the hospital. The hospital is taking care of cancer affected children, children born with heart defects and more…

Strongly expecting your reply to my office email id: volunteer@meenakshimission.org (or) nazar26rd@gmail.com

Thanks

nazar
Resource and Development
Meenakshi Mission Hospital and Research Centre
Madurai, Tamil nadu, India

Intuition tells me this was not written by a candidate. It was crafted by a “student” (maybe of politics, perhaps of any age), acting as a newly-inaugurated “President”, in January 2009.

Cheers! Frank

I don’t know who you are quoting here but am keen to find out. I’ll subscribe to your RSS entry feed so I will know when you publish it!

Cheers,
Mary

THE AUTHORS RESPONSE:

My guess as to the origin of summer vacation would be agriculture induced. Summer is the time when most growing communities have/had crops coming in as well as many other tasks that needed done and thus, more hands needed so classes were lessened in that season.

Many schools are indeed cutting the number of summer programs available and this year in particular, closing down as many schools as possible to save money.

As far as learning is concerned, I agree that a break does seem counter intuitive at initial glance. However there are several reasons why this works. One is the sleep needs of the average child.

I’ll expand on this in the next post- Wisdom of Summer.