Wish You Were Here

So, so you think you can tell

Heaven from hell

Blue skies from pain

Can you tell a green field

From a cold steel rail?

A smile from a veil?

Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade

Your heroes for ghosts?

Hot ashes for trees?

Hot air for a cool breeze?

Cold comfort for change?

Did you exchange

A walk on part in the war

For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here

We're just two lost souls

Swimming in a fish bowl

Year after year

Running over the same old ground

What have we found

The same old fears

Wish you were here

- 'Wish You Were Here' by Pink Floyd

There's nothing wrong with admitting to ourselves that we miss people in our lives. Being sentimental, mourning the past or feeling the pain of missing the presence of those who have either passed away or gone out of our lives for another reason, is a natural and 'normal' part of what it is to be human. As I wrote in another piece we naturally form attachments to others in our lives, and often it is not until someone is gone that we realise just how much we truly value them, and how attached we actually are.

There are pitfalls to our tendency towards attachment to people, and our relationships need constant attention and work if they are to remain healthy for us and others. One of the most common mistakes we make, or rather, patterns we fall into, is to take people for granted. This has to be avoided at all costs. It only ever leads to a lessening of our appreciation of the other person in our lives, and inevitably, to the other person feeling undervalued and unequal in the relationship. Maintaining a healthy awareness of our human tendency to take others for granted goes a long way to ensuring we do not trample all over those we are attached to.

Another common pattern we can fall into is forming unhealthy attachments to people, and/or forming attachments to people who are wrong for us. Much of the reason why this happens is rooted in problems with childhood attachment to our parents. Whole books have been written on this subject, and whilst I do intend to explore this area in future I won't go into detail here. Suffice it to say that if the quality of our relationship with our parents or caregivers as children was poor, we are much more likely to settle for poor quality relationships with people as adults, or even subconsciously seek out unhealthy and destructive people in our lives. Some people become pushovers, some get into abusive relationships, some are always playing the victim, some a mix of all of these. Getting out of this pattern can be extremely difficult and involve a monumental effort of will, such is the power of attachment.

Grief and loss are extremely difficult things to cope with. It is almost a paradox that despite the certain knowledge that we are all born to die, death is such a hard and painful thing to deal with. Few would deny that, regardless of one's beliefs around death, bereavement is at the top of a list of the most stressful things to ever happen in life. The death of anyone to whom we are attached is always painful. There are various factors which affect the depth and length of the grief process, of course. How long we have known the person, how close we were, the part they played in our lives (particularly at the early stages), how and why they died - we mourn them because we miss them, and mourn we must if we are to carry on with life without them. Sadly though, sometimes people can find it beyond them to move on. They get stuck within attachment to the past, and as their spirit weakens the world keeps turning without paying them a blind bit of attention.

It can be just as painful and difficult when we lose people, not through death, but in a whole host of other circumstances. Distance can be a killer. Despite our interconnected world there really is no substitute for physical presence, contact and interaction. When anyone we love moves away from us there is always a loss that can be hard to bare and draining on the heart. It is incumbent on both parties to do the work of keeping in touch, until such time as they can be reunited. Sometimes we can lose people because they spend too much time apart from us. This is often because of work commitments. How many marriages fail because there is just not enough family time? Ironic really that we often spend so much time and energy providing for our families, and so little time enjoying them.

Perhaps one of the very hardest losses in life when it comes to others though is when, for whatever reason(s), relationships turn bad. There are few experiences in life sadder or more soul-destroying than a once healthy relationship turning sour, often seemingly without reason, with all the associated emotion and feelings of anger, betrayal, hurt, even hatred that come with it. We have to engage in a process of extracting ourselves from the attachment to the other person, and every single tendril of it must be removed if we are to have the best chance of moving on in a healthy way. The whole process can seem even harder when we come to the realisation that, arguments and fights aside, we have simply outgrown the other person, or they us, or both. But, these are the 'growing pains' of life, and despite the necessary suffering involved we must get used to the fact that it will likely happen again, that outgrowing people is actually another 'normal' and healthy part of life.

“These are the intensities that one cannot live with, that he has to outgrow if he wants to survive. But who can help grieving for them? If the blood vessels could hold them, how much better to keep those early loves with us?” - Tennessee Williams

I miss my family and friends who have left this mortal coil. I miss old friends and associates with whom I once shared a path in life. I miss the laughter and the light and the love of those connections. I miss their presence, the certainty of that. I miss the simplest of things about them, and I believe that I always will. But there is no going back now, such is life. So this is me, smiling through tears, remembering. I wish you were here..

Wish You Were Here lyrics © Concord Music Publishing LLC, BMG Rights Management

Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.