What Do We Value Most at the Face of Death?
Growing up, my parents struggled to make ends meet as they both worked long hours in hard labor factory jobs. My mother worked at the same fish factory job for most of her life until she died while my father is currently living on the road as a very proud truck driver. Money was always a problem: not having enough, not making enough, spending it all, debts, bankruptcy and the list goes on. I’ve realized now, years later, that I unconsciously equated money to “violence,” “unhappy,” and “evil” and have spent much of my life avoiding it despite the fact that I’ve been working since I was 13 years old.
When you grow up having less, your sense of what you value is specific. Buying things that make you look less poor. Buying things to make you feel less poor. Buying things to keep up with everyone else who can buy more things. Not wanting to buy anything at all in fear of your survival. Living in a world that values you on what you can buy and is constantly selling you on how you’re never buying enough is pretty intense.
All of this raises the question: what do we truly value? Many of us have experienced eye-opening and profound realizations about our lives in response to the pandemic. Do those realizations still hold true for you today?
My work with BACII brings me intimate to the cycles of life, grief, gratitude, and loss. Every week I work with clients in their grief. Every month I show up and listen to the suffering and joys that people share during BACII gatherings. I facilitate experiences that help us get in touch with our lives. I’m always listening to what is said, shared, and being asked of during this time. What I hear people need most are not things and what people truly value most at the face of their lives and death are not things.
We need more human-to-human experiences. We need more opportunities and spaces to grow and heal. We need more intimate connections. We need more support.
Grief, loss, and death are topics we tend to avoid the most while we continue to distract ourselves with fragments of other worlds. How are we supposed to lean into these topics if no one gave us permission, if we don’t know how, if the fear of doing so is too much? On the flip side, how are we truly spending our precious time — how are we experiencing our lives?
At a time when materialism is at its highest, can we remember what is truly valuable? Can we express our love to those we care about with more gifts that tend to the heart instead of accumulating more things?
If you or anyone you know would benefit from being supported in their grief or simply in their life right now — consider one of these services as an invaluable gift this year. Additionally, BACII’s signature offering, YU is having a transformative impact on participants, by helping to reconnect them to what really matters in their lives through the exploration of our impermanence. Perhaps you or someone you love would find this experience beneficial?
Whether you have little money or more than enough: it takes $0 to love. To love yourself, those around you, and our world.
With an expansive heart,
Mangda
