The Forgotten Skills of Dying and Grieving Well: How Engaging with Loss Can Help Us Live More Fully
The Great Simplification #190 with Stephen Jenkinson
In Western culture, topics surrounding death and dying are often considered taboo and are generally avoided in everyday conversations. But this reluctance to fully acknowledge and integrate death as a natural part of the human experience has rendered us less able to cope with the end of life and less prepared to show up for ourselves and the people around us as we inevitably navigate loss. But what if a more skillful engagement with death and grief could actually offer us a more mindful approach to living?
In this conversation, I’m joined by Stephen Jenkinson, a cultural activist and author on the topic of grief, loss, and dying, to discuss his extensive work on grief literacy and the shortcomings of the dominant cultural attitudes towards death. Stephen reflects on his experiences as a palliative care counselor, offering insights on how to navigate the complexities of life and death, advocating for a more profound participation with grief.
What if we viewed grief as a skill rather than an affliction? What opportunities and insights become available to us as we more deeply understand and accept death as a part of life? In what ways does modern culture's reliance on hope act as a distraction from facing reality – and how does this harm us towards the end of life?
In case you missed it…
Last week, I was joined by environmental journalist, Oliver Milman, to discuss the alarming decline in insect populations in the past few decades and the far-reaching consequences this has for ecosystem stability, human well-being, and the overall health of the biosphere. From pollination and nutrient cycles to being the base of food webs for countless other animals, the loss of insects has cascading effects beyond what we could imagine. Oliver outlines the human activity that is driving the worst of these trends, including how accelerating global heating is amplifying these ecological pressures.
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Grief is definitely a skill.
We have to learn how to learn. Those who learn best discover we learn by going into and managing the pain beyond our experience and knowledge where all our faculties are at their maximum, expanding our abilities before they degrade from overexertion. We learn maximum, full learning by intelligently never going 5% (subjectively) beyond our boundaries; otherwise we'll harm ourselves if not die. I call this capacity for full-spectrum learning Managing the Red Zone and discuss how it works in the Introduction to Volume 2 of No Ego Odyssey, starting at page xxiv printed on the pdf page. https://noegoodyssey.com/stage-2-introduction/
Children daily go beyond their knowledge and experience through 1) a spirit of play and 2) knowledge their parents love and protect them. To grieve (our maximum learning event), adults face pain beyond experience and knowledge through 1) a spirit of play and 2) conviction they'll be okay in the unknown (faith).
Facing death is the ultimate unknowable in our own bodies, yet essential for life. For humanity, facing death and grieving before death starts at the annihilation of Ego and ends with the annihilation of Self, but this is not the end of the process. All the great spiritual traditions approach the challenge differently.
The most important episode you’ve done so far. Thank you. 🙏🩵🌈