It usually happens when you lose someone… death, breakup. That the idea of “tomorrow” and “future” starts looking bleak, miserable and totally unworthy to live for.
To live a day without that person, it feels hauntingly depressing.
To think of a New Year’s Eve, Christmas, Diwali, the birthdays and the anniversaries, without her or him… it’s implausibly disheartening.
This is also the time when hope escapes the conscious, and time seems mortally small to heal the pain.
Everyone, at least once in life, gets stuck in such a position. Many poor souls have to endure this frequently.
If you’re going through the same, hang in there. If you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot there and just hang in.
The loss isn’t as much of a pain as is the idea of living your whole life with that loss.
This idea of a hollowed and possibly a never-happy future is what amplifies the pain of the loss.
And this is where you STOP thinking of the future.
Stop.
If you can’t think of a year from now, think of the next month.
If you can’t think of the next month, think of the next week.
If you can’t think of the next week, think the next day.
If you can’t imagine your next day, imagine your next hour, and the next minute, and the next second.
Stop focusing on “tomorrow” and the “future”. Stop magnifying the pain of your loss.
Think of a smaller time frame that doesn’t neurotically remind you of your loss — a time frame where you’re (unsatisfyingly) comfortable with the reality of your loss.
Take each moment, each hour, each day and each month as a single entity of time, detached from “tomorrow” and the future.
It sure is difficult to do that. BUT ironically enough, it’s also the easiest and most effective way to survive any and every loss.
And by the time you realize, time would have done its work. The pain would have faded. And the future would now not look so depressing.