Alcestis
Memorial Day and Sunk Cost.
Today is Memorial Day, a day to remember those who have passed before us. It is also a time to reflect on our most valuable asset: time, and consider how we spend it. Not everything that was sacrificed and died for was positive. Some at gravesides are breathing a sigh of relief that death has finally come to those in the ground. Still, others may want to forget the death altogether, as what was passed on was just pain and suffering.
How we show up each day and what we bring is important. When you are invited to a party, it is thoughtful to bring something for the host. Maybe today you are simply showing up for yourself. That might sound a bit selfish, but showing up for yourself first might be proper, as it might give you the courage and strength to show up for others. No need to burn yourself out keeping others warm.
Maybe today is a good day to have a memorial for yourself and your sunk cost. Maybe simply thank your past self for all you did up to this point and start over with something new. There is no need to continue with things that might not be working because of all the time and money you have invested in them. Maybe today you might like to paint or write rather than make pots. Maybe today you can have a little memorial service for your past self at some grave, thanking your past self for the skills and things up to this point but also acknowledging it might be time to move on to more productive and fulfilling ways to bring about change to yourself and those around you.
Resistance dislikes change and wants you to pine and worry about your sunk cost and fret about all the time and money spent on that thing that did not work or that you didn’t find fulfilling. The gravitational pull from those in power over you may not enjoy the break as you are living in your own grave of fear, taking their spot for them, like some Alcestis saving some Admetus from some Hades. Do not take their place. Forget sunk cost, as resistance and time do not care about your well-being.
” To this hour I have protected him and his. I, who am just, chanced on the son of Pheres, a just man, whom I have saved from Death by tricking the Fates. The Goddesses pledged me their faith Admetus should escape immediate death if, in exchange, another corpse were given to the Under-Gods.
One by one he tested all his friends, and even his father and the old mother who bad brought him forth-and found none that would die for him and never more behold the light of day, save only his wife. Now, her spirit waiting to break loose, she droops upon his arm within the house; this is the day when she must die and render up her life.” - Alcestis. By Euripides, Translated by Richard Aldington
I do hope that my writing here did not cause you to roll your kilns and wheel over the bank. But I do hope you take time to reevaluate things in light of time and the shortness of life and how we spend it. Once we make the changes, we may thank our past selves for dying a death on Memorial Day, as we are so much better off on the new path we chose to take. So run, Alcestis, from that fiery pit.
Written By,
Alford Wayman
Artist/Owner
