As relational beings, we are in relationship to everyone and everything around us. That means we get “organized” in a certain way – in our culture, in our family (of course), in our beliefs and in the roles we play with those around us. We don’t even notice how we are organized really until something changes or is taken away. When the thing that organized you is taken out from under you, you may have a feeling of disorientation or even grief. You will soon reorganize yourself, but for the time being, there is usually some protest – even if the thing that was taken from you was the thing that was killing you.

Think about it – what can you not live without? Your family, your coffee, your job, your dreams for the future, your home? Think about giving any of those things up. You may feel like you are in free fall. Yes, even with your coffee. There is, many times, a desperate search to find something else to organize you. The whole of life and development is about having those things taken from us (many times against our will?) and then reorganizing ourselves in a different way. Sometimes we do not grieve the loss very well and we are organized around the loss rather than reorganizing around something that will continue to give us life. It is not that those first things were bad. It is just that they do not always last forever and we usually learn that they are not the things that truly give us life like we thought they would.