Easter Reflection - "The way life is supposed to be"

I regard Michael Leunig as a modern-day prophet, and for a few years I had the cartoon above displayed on the door of my office. I still often pull it out of my filing cabinet to show to students who are struggling with the gap between “the way life is supposed to be” and “the way life actually is”.

Essentially our primary task as human beings is to live as authentically as we can in the midst of reality as we experience it. One of my favourite quotes is from the famous psychiatrist M. Scott Peck (author of ‘The Road Less Travelled’); “mental health is an on-going process of dedication to reality at all costs”. Yet many of the young people I speak to are bound by the thoughts that plague them, or vision of the way things “should” be. When a crisis or challenge occurs, as much emotional energy can be spent managing the gap between reality and the way things “should” be as is spent facing the challenge itself!

In a sense, almost all human unhappiness and anger arises from the sense that reality is somehow different from what we’d like it to be. The word “is” seems very small and insignificant. Yet one of the key challenges we face in life is coming to terms with what is. Life is full of struggle and hardship as well as deep joy and happiness. The two are intimately linked together. As Kahlil Gibran once wrote in his famous book ‘The Prophet’; “When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight”. A key challenge is to find ways of “surrendering” to what is and allowing ourselves to experience Life fully, rather than succumbing to the human tendency to make a judgement about what is before responding emotionally to that judgement.

One of the powerful aspects of the Easter story is that it captures two of the universal themes of life – the grief and darkness of death, and the enduring re-emergence and resilience of life in the midst of this darkness. Deep sadness and unbelievable joy are acknowledged and celebrated side-by-side. The events that gave rise to these traditions are shrouded in mystery as deep as Life itself. Nevertheless, whatever our beliefs, we can still respond with an affirmation of the enduring and interconnected realities of life and death, joy and sorrow, love and grief.