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Cemetery walk can help you focus on what's important

Over the years, I've spent a good amount of time leading stress management workshops for area groups. When I ask participants to share their own individual sources of stress, they consistently identify one culprit in particular: "No matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to slow down. There's always too much to do in too little time."

Of course, the solution to this dilemma is fairly obvious. We just need to do less. Yet in our frantic racing from place to place and commitment to commitment, we hardly have time to realize what we're doing, let alone decide what we can give up.

In fact, just making such a decision itself - weighing values and alternatives, making choices, etc. - requires that we slacken our pace. That's a bit hard to do when our problem to begin with is not knowing how to slow down.

Often, certain techniques, habits or experiences can help us to better manage the stress in our lives. When it comes to slowing down, I've found one experience in particular especially helpful. I'd like to share it with you.

In our society, we usually view cemeteries as symbols of death. Yet I think we also could choose to see them as expressions of life and, surprisingly, even stress-management resources.

Two or three times a year, I enjoy just wandering through a cemetery. As I do so, I find myself inescapably confronted with both the uncertainty and vulnerability of life.

An old, weathered marker reads: "Beloved Son. Born October 1, 1845. Died December 7, 1866." I let my imagination free - a young man, cut down in his prime, perhaps in that war between the states that tore our nation apart.

A few feet away is the grave of another casualty of yet another divisive war. "He served his nation well. Born June 2, 1951. Died June 3, 1971." More than 100 years had passed in the short distance between those two graves, yet little had really changed.

A family plot is tucked away within a grave of oaks. A small marker reads simply: "September 4, 1890 - February 18, 1891." Pneumonia? Influenza? It saddened me to think of an infant who never grew to taste life in all its richness and variety, of parents cheated of the joys of watching her grow into womanhood.

"December 3, 1931 - March 27, 1972. Beloved husband and father." I imagined a woman and her children rebuilding their lives without the person for whom they cared so deeply.

"A Life Fully Lived. Born June 2, 1901. Died October 18, 1984." Certainly this woman lived out her years in a special way. Her passing can be mourned, but her life celebrated.

Each marker, each monument is a message to me about life. There is no listing of how much each person frantically accomplished in his/her span of years. There are no titles or degrees or awards. We have no way of telling who lived in a North Shore mansion and who rented a room above a storefront.

As I walk, I find myself once again recognizing that such details are really rather insignificant. More important questions are raised. Did these people experience love - both in the giving as well as the receiving? Did they find fulfillment, a sense of peace? Were they happy?

When I consider such questions, I can take a slightly different perspective on my own tendency to race frantically through life. And I find myself slowing down, almost effortlessly.

At least for a while, I've had to make such a cemetery pilgrimage a regular part of my life. There is always so much to do, and I can easily get caught up again in the doing, rather than the living.

I don't give guarantees, but I can almost guarantee to you that, if you'll risk such an encounter with death, and life, as I've described, you too will allow yourself to do a bit less, and perhaps live a bit more.

• Dr. Ken Potts is on the staff of Samaritan Counseling Center in Naperville and Downers Grove. He is the author of "Mix Don't Blend, A Guide to Dating, Engagement and Remarriage With Children."

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