I don’t know the answers to the big questions of life. But everything is relative, everything has a story.
Yes, I’ve met amazing souls, and the lights fill me—flattering lights that shine on my face and I confront myself in the mirror to take a deep howling look into the troubles that have lined and distorted me, giving me the streaks and shrieks of anger, like fire crackers exploding from small ignitions so miniscule that they are barely visible.
After the blast, there is no trace of their existence. Yet another relationship, another being, is passionately ejected out of one’s life—to become another memory unforgotten.
How many times must one live this story, before you can re-route the landing and make it smooth without too many bumps on the runway?
What creates this weakness, and what prevents us from improving our choices? When will the roads we choose be paved with concrete, instead of quicksand?
Enlightenment? The painful thing about enlightenment is that you cannot go back to the warm, safe place that ignorance keeps so impenetrable for us. You simply accept that it’s the only protection from knowledge and existence, and that a partner has to be working alongside you. If he doesn’t, then its like one hand clapping. It has to meet the other hand to make the sound of applause.
I’ve had a great run, the highest and lowest of lows, both professionally and personally.
Life and death live in the flicker of an eye, a flash in a cloud or a bubble in a stream. That is how fragile they can be. That one we’ve lost yet, we were blessed to have and had his light in on life.
I feel his presence daily. And I feel grateful that my time happened when it did. I’m grateful I can look back and say once more, “I’m so glad we had this time together.”
As for the career, sometimes I catch myself daydreaming: about being young again and doing it all over. But as you reflect on all the wonderful times you’ve had and continue to have, you just live your dreams to the fullest. You can strip away the things that seem important, and go back to the basics.
We discover that all we really have that matters is family — the four girls, the grandchildren who continue to encourage us to run the race, to live life honestly, to never forget to play and to love as if there is no tomorrow.
Along the way, we’ve learned that compassion is a great medicine. And if we can cultivate compassion for those who have hurt us, we might have the possibility of overcoming our anger, pain and fear. All these that stifles joy. So, all you need, is the intention and the wish to be happy and it will be so.
I don’t know, but I’ll chart my own course through an unexpected terrain, respond to the changing times and use my own internal compass. I won’t be afraid to commit a mistake—maybe not being perfect is what prefect really means.
What’s next? I don’t know. But I’ll wake up each morning, just happy to be alive. Whenever I find my chin on the ground, I’ll remember that the human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it.
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E-mail Mylah at [email protected]
