I’m trying to figure out how to process all that is happening in my life right now. I feel like I am surrounded by death. Someone I knew from support group died a couple days ago. I did not know her well, but I did know her. I remember her energy and smile from the retreat we did in February. She was well then. It reminds me of just how quick things can change. Someone can be doing relatively well on a treatment, and then the treatment stops working and the person gets sick really quickly.

I feel like all this death is tell me that I should be doing something – and has me questioning what that something should be. I know that I make a difference on an individual level – in that I help individual people – but I don’t know what I should do on the grander level. Is making an individual difference enough for me?

I feel like I need to do more bucket list things. I don’t want to die having money in the bank having not done the things that I want to do because I’m saving for a future that I might not have. We did our Going East bike trip because we knew that it was “now or never”, waiting for retirement was not a good idea. When I was diagnosed, I was so thankful that we had done that trip, as even now it is no longer possible.

Work on embodied cognition claims that the human mind does not learn by storing generalizations and abstractions. It learns via experience. Human long-term memory is nearly limitless and humans store the experiences they have had in their minds. They then use these experiences to prepare for future action. They do this by consulting their previous experiences to see if any are good guides for how to act and think in the new situation. (Gee, 2014, p.76-77)

The idea of learning as experiences also has me wanting to have more experiences. This goes back to the bucket list, and feeling the need to have more experiences. But I’m not sure what those experiences should be. All of life is an experience. I feel the need to remember to live it, as that is the only way I will get over the grief associated with loss.

I’m still processing this … trying to figure it all out …

Reference

Gee, James P. Literacy and Education. Routledge, 2014. VitalBook file.