The night after Sean killed himself I was taking my customary two-mile loop walk around our small rural village when I saw about thirty or forty young people gathered outside one of the houses on a narrow dirt road. Some were clustered around a grill, where food was cooking. Others were in the field playing softball. A few were in the vacant end of the cemetery across the road, practicing their golf swings.

The next morning Sean's father, Tom, told me that the family who owns that house had invited the young people over so they could be in one another's company and talk about what had happened.

What a generous and timely response to such a terrible and untimely event. On the spur of the moment this family bought food, opened their home, and brought together all these teenagers, so they could share their bafflement, their grief, and their countless stories about their friend.

Later that night they gathered in front of Sean's house for a candlelight vigil, dozens of young people, their faces illuminated in the dark, the stories about their friend continuing to pour out.

Recently the husband of a good friend of mine died after a long illness that left him bedridden, unable to speak or move for several years. During that time, my friend supervised her husband's caregivers at their home. She had to take on the task of selling his business and finding homes for his papers and library. And, in the nine years of his illness, she was also largely responsible for helping both her uncle and her mother through their last years and deaths.

Yet my friend continues to look fit and healthy. She has an active spiritual practice, she has lost none of her intellectual curiosity, and she has the most extraordinary sense of ceremony of anyone I have ever known. She admits that she is fragile, but she is in no way beaten.

When I spent the weekend with her recently, I asked her how she managed to handle so much and survive so well.

She answered right away, "I didn't need for things to be different."

We talked about it. She explained that accepting what life was throwing her way had made it possible to cope. She wasted no time wishing that the situation were other than it was. Treating each circumstance that arose as the reality of the moment, she was able to deal with it with what I always perceived as meticulousness, compassion, fierceness, and grace.

I found her statement intriguingly helpful. If you don't need things to be different, you make life easier for yourself because you don't have to battle reality; you can simply confront it. Relieved from wishing and complaining, you ask questions, call for help, and make choices. You survive then, and those whose lives you touch are eased as well. 

Above: Kwan Yin, goddess of compassion 

In Bali, where nature, spirit, and art are interwoven, the cycles of a person's life are an intrinsic part of that essential braid. Rites of passage marking the soul's journey through the present life begin when the child is in the womb and continue till death, when the cremation ceremony is an elaborate, colorful, and cacophonous celebration.

In my annual Bali from Within trip, I work with local guides who take our small groups to private, local ceremonies that visitors would ordinarily not even know about, let alone witness.

Last year we were able to attend a telubulan, the ceremony given to a child three months after birth. The primary point is for the priest to give the child her name (although the parents have probably already clued him in on what they wish that name to be).

Family and friends arrived early at the family compound, bringing gifts and taking time to mingle and chat. Gamelan music, played by nieces and cousins, filled the air. Before the ceremony, two family members walked around the compound, cleansing it with and prayers and incense.

The high point of the ceremony was the moment when the baby was placed on the ground before a basket of offerings. As her maternal relatives adorned her wrists and ankles with bracelets to ward off evil spirits, the little girl's curiosity and consternation were duly cooed over and recorded on cell phones. Then the priest blessed her. A feast followed.

Recognition that the soul is engaged on a journey through a life and that family and village are responsible for attending to that journey contribute to keeping Balinese culture strong and vital. A person, including an infant, is a fully realized human with his or her own guardians, both in the spirit world and in the community.

Trebbe Johnson, "Reuniting with Wounded Places," The Ecologist, 1/21/13