I will not romanticize what happened to me. My husband died. My child died. I was bedridden for three years. If I could have prevented any of it, I would have.
But I cannot speak honestly without also speaking about what the loss opened. Not because suffering is good. Because what I discovered in the wreckage was that I had been living at a fraction of my actual capacity, defended against an intensity of presence I had been unconsciously avoiding. The grief stripped away the defenses. And what was underneath was not the devastation I expected. It was something remarkably awake.
Mirabai understood this from a different direction — her losses were chosen renunciations. Mine were imposed. But the structure is similar: what we lose forces us to find out what we are when the scaffolding is gone.
The examined life does not wait for catastrophe. It asks, now, while things are ordinary and secure: what am I actually made of? What would I carry if everything else were taken?
These questions have different weight when you ask them before the crisis. But the answers are the same.