“A brain is only capable of what it could conceive, and it couldn’t conceive what it hasn’t experienced.”
-Graham Greene-
You might take this message to heart, if you’re starting to think about the possibility of inviting new love into your life.
Many years after my first husband passed away, it was still quite inconceivable to me that I could ever be with another man. After all, I had met my husband when I was 15 years old, and he was my one and only boyfriend. I didn’t know anything else, so, as Greene states, I couldn’t conceive anything else.
It wasn’t even that I felt I would be “cheating” on him. As a person who never dated, I just could not grasp the idea of being with a different person.
Greene’s statement may also be applied to loss in general. Moreover, I believe that you can attribute a major obstacle of being able to move through your grief to the concept it presents.
If you’ve never previously experienced the loss of a mate, you naturally have not conceived or learned how to deal with this tragic life circumstance. At first, your body goes into shock to protect you from the assault on your sensibilities. It doesn’t allow you to even think about what your life can or will look like now and going forward. You just exist to get through moment to moment. This “inconceivability factor” can also hamper your ability to trust and believe that it’s possible you will eventually feel better and be able to live/love again.
To overcome this factor, I ask you to consider the idea that your brain is a “fixed” part of your body, and, therefore, it can’t change. The good news is that your imagination lives outside of your brain, so it CAN change and conceive the impossible without having had any prior experience with a particular situation. If this is true, then I ask you to dream big about the new life you can lead. Next, “pull” your ideas into your brain for digestion and eventual implementation. Remember that all greatness is first born in your imagination!
