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was thinking this morning about the Stages of Dying, and as I see it
these stages we all go through as we make any changes in Life.
We all are in the process of change right now, so these stages might help us see where we are and how to get through it.
Stages
The stages are:
- Denial:
- Example - "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening."'Not to me!"
- Anger:
- Example - "Why me? It's not fair!" "NO! NO! How can you accept this!"
- Bargaining:
- Example - "Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything, can't you stretch it out? A few more years."
- Depression:
- Example - "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die . . . What's the point?"
- Acceptance:
- Example - "It's going to be OK."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."
Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to any form of
catastrophic personal loss (job, income, freedom). This also includes
the death of a loved one, divorce,
drug addiction, or infertility. Kübler-Ross also claimed these steps do
not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps
experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always
experience at least two.
Others have noticed that any significant personal change can elicit
these stages. For example, experienced criminal defense attorneys are
aware that defendants who are facing stiff sentences, yet have no
defenses or mitigating factors to lessen their sentences, often
experience the stages. Accordingly, they must get to the acceptance
stage before they are prepared to plead guilty.
Additionally, the change in circumstances does not always have to be
a negative one, just significant enough to cause a grief response to
the loss (Scire, 2007). Accepting a new work position, for example,
causes one to lose their routine, workplace friendships, familiar drive
to work, or even customary lunch sources.
The most common factor is when the person doesn't have the capacity
to change their situation, at least not without considerable loss to
themselves, thus a person who would go through these stages would not
need to continue if they found a way out of the situation: e.g., If a
person losing their house was at the bargaining stage but then somehow
found a way out of the situation, then they'd have no reason to become
depressed. So the 'stages of grief' could be linked to a lack of
control or ability, e.g., people who have lost limbs, people on the bad
end of an ultimatum, people under threat, and so on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model
Here is what Shakespeare wrote about Changes...
All the World's a Stage by William Shakespeare
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Abraham Lincoln:
The
dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The
occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the
occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
Alan Cohen:
It
takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to
embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer
meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for
in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
Aldous Huxley:
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
Alvin Toffler:
In
describing today's accelerating changes, the media fire blips of
unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of
narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of
unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections
or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes
to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic.
American proverb:
It doesn't work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps.
Anais Nin:
We
do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one
dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are
relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past,
present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in
the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
Anais Nin:
Life
is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go
through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and
remain in it. This is a kind of death.
Charles Bower