Binoculars of grief and gain

Tuesday November 14th 2006

Douglas Ota

Kids: don?t read this article if you have never used binoculars. While you don?t need to be an avid nature lover or birdwatcher armed with the latest model, the message here will fly straight past you if you?ve never tried to focus something with one of these optical aids.

This article is about moving; not in the sense of shaking or feeling unsteady when using binoculars, but in the very real sense of packing up and shipping your life and relationships to another location, or perhaps when people you know or care about move on, leaving you behind. Inevitably you will feel that no matter how carefully the movers box your wares, your belongings always look and feel different at the other end. It is often only when you unpack, or perhaps when you return to school for the first time since your friend has left, that you suddenly feel in your gut just how profoundly things have changed. It may well seem as though life as you knew it has stopped. Nothing is the same ? including your own identity. Nobody knows you, what you?ve been through, or what you?re good at. You wonder how this mountain of boxes and feelings will ever be rearranged into something that looks and feels like ?your life? again.

Weighing up the losses and gains

The most essential tool you will need when you first move abroad is a pair of binoculars, albeit hypothetical. And these are no ordinary binoculars either. Odd though this may seem to you, in the experience of relocating, you always need to remember that two processes are underway: one is grief, the other is gain. Through one lens of these grief and gain binoculars, you can behold all that it is losing and letting go: the people you loved, the house that was ?home?, the places you visited and all the things you tasted. Through the other lens, you can see strangers that might be kind, houses that might become home, famous places you?ve always wanted to see, and delicious food that you cannot yet name. One half of the binoculars helps you cope with the reality of loss, while the other helps you spot the potential gains.

Beware the telescope

Binoculars give you the full picture. Beware the telescope. It?s true, you can see into the distance with a telescope too, but you?ll have one eye closed, and you're only taking in half the view.

Many people focus primarily on one half of the moving experience, either staring at the opportunities while squinting at the challenges, or vice versa. When challenged people tend to drop their binoculars and make a grab for the telescope, gaping exclusively at either the grief or the gain, probably because it?s simpler. But as we know, too much of one thing is never good and the healthiest life is a balanced life. Focusing on everything that?s wrong is easier than making peace with the fact that only some of it is wrong. We have probably all focused on the things we don?t like about family member X, rather than making the effort to weigh up both sides of what we do and what we don?t like about them. While looking at one side is the easier option, learning to accept and tolerate both is the hallmark of maturity.

Seeing negatively

Some people are so overwhelmed by loss that they smash any mention of potential gain, clutching their grief telescope with white knuckles and iron resolve. Their attachment to the grief telescope can come from any number of very real sources. People can be terribly afraid of giving everything up. Perhaps nobody consulted them prior to an international relocation, perhaps it was casually ?announced? that the family is moving, maybe in a month, maybe in a week, sometimes even in a matter of days. Picture a somewhat shy teenager who has never moved, who relies on her friends far more than her parents, who was just informed that the family will be going abroad in one month; suddenly the reasons for her grip on the grief telescope become clear.

Seeing too positively

Others seize the gain telescope with both hands. There is no sign of difficulty on the horizon: the move to Europe is "going to be great!? and the family is all ?going to make new friends!? and everyone reminds them that it?s a "fantastic opportunity!? All of these things are true, but not to expect real challenges is naïve and unrealistic. People who grip gain telescopes might just be inexperienced in the challenges of mobility. More likely, they have been brought up to ALWAYS focus on the positive, meaning that even mentioning a perceived challenge or difficulty is a sign of being weak or having a bad attitude. If they are used to overlooking feelings of loss and grief, feelings that logically go with the experience of moving, gain telescopes can become dangerous.

Finding a happy balance

Success lies in achieving a balance with both the grief and gain lenses of the binoculars, moving back and forth between the two, focusing on something difficult in the transitions landscape, and moving over to something hopeful in that landscape. This process of moving between grief and gain is a well-known method in the treatment of bereavement: to recover from loss, it is essential to give yourself alternating doses of different types of thinking and feeling, both about what you?ve lost and about what you hope to gain. Gradually, under the influence of time, the whole of your new landscape will become neatly fused and you will be able to focus your grief and gain binoculars like an expert, coping with your new life in foreign lands with relative ease.

Douglas Ota is a child psychologist, school counsellor and chair of the transitions programme team at the American School of The Hague in the Netherlands

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