DO YOU BELIEVE
that a
LIFE TIME
can be lived in a moment. . .
Maybe the saddest thing
about this one minute award winning film
is that it’s
J U S T
A ONE MINUTE AWARD WINNING FILM
(And not a an-everyday-reality)
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst
Be
A Caring Catalyst
enough to
DISPROVE
IT
NOT SO FAST
Was this past year and a half
a complete wash out because of the Pandemic
or were there a few
TAKE-A-WAYS. . .
Your Pandemic Habits May Fade Away—
But the Strength and Wisdom You Gained Won’t. . .
Jamie Ducharme, a frequent journalist for TIME MAGAZINE took a good look at glancing back over the past year to remind us that maybe,
JUST MAYBE
NOT EVERYTHING
wasn’t all bad
and some
ACTUALLY GOOD. . .
Since the pandemic began, the think-piece economy has churned out countless articles about how our world—work, medical care, cities, transit, social interactions—will be different when it finally ends. . .
But will we be different after the pandemic?
Judging by the fact that a New York Times essay titled, “You Can Be a Different Person After the Pandemic” quickly became a meme this past spring, it’s safe to say lots of people have changed over the last year-plus. How the pandemic changed your life, of course, depends very much on how you lived before it. A childless white-collar worker who spent a year at home in sweatpants obviously had a different pandemic experience than a doctor working ICU shifts, or a grocery clerk desperate for adequate PPE, or a single mom struggling to homeschool her kids while also supporting them.
But almost to a person, the pandemic altered some elements of our lives. Old habits, from grabbing coffee with friends to visiting the gym, were suddenly rendered unsafe. New behaviors—masking, social distancing, vigilant hand-washing—rapidly became routine. And in many cases, our personalities or values or temperaments changed too, as a byproduct of extra flexibility and free time, loneliness, fear, stress, awareness of mortality, or any number of other emotions brought on by this seismic event.
Now, as shots go into more arms every day, many of us are standing, blinking into the sunlight, and wondering what happens next. Will we still bake sourdough and tend our houseplants when there are once again other things to do? Will we return to offices, or to our old jobs at all? Will we ever feel safe shaking hands with a stranger, ever pack into a crowded bar without wondering who’s exhaling which germs?
In short. . .
Will we ever get back to where we were
B E F O R E. . .
Humans are adaptable; when our surroundings and circumstances change, so do we. It’s that skill that allowed us to develop new habits during the pandemic in the first place. Mask-wearing is one obvious example—something few people in the U.S. did regularly before March 2020 quickly became second nature for many.
Now, after performing pandemic-era routines for more than a year, they may feel permanent—but Benjamin Gardner, a behavior-change researcher at King’s College London, says people may be surprised by how quickly they fall into their old ways when their circumstances change back to normal. Habits explicitly based on “temporary changes to our situation,” such as wearing a mask in public, will likely be the first to go, Gardner says.
That’s already happening, particularly since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed its mask guidance for fully vaccinated people. A May 25 Axios/Ipsos poll found that 45% of people in the U.S. said they always wear a mask outside the home, down from 58% earlier in May. That’s a clear sign that people are abandoning their pandemic-era behaviors, in line with historical examples. One 2009 research review examining public behavior during respiratory disease outbreaks concluded that people are quite willing to tweak their behavior at the most dangerous part of an outbreak, but that willingness fades over time. When the danger passes, we go back to the way we were.
Y I K E S
Routines formed during—but not in direct response to—the pandemic may also slip away once it ends, Gardner says. How you behave is dictated largely by where you are and who you’re with. If the context that cues a behavior stays the same, you’ll likely keep doing it. But if your context changes, so might your actions. If, for example, you used to buy lunch every day from the same salad place near your office, you may find yourself doing that again when you return to in-person work—even if you’ve steadfastly prepped all your meals at home during the pandemic.
Reward is another key element of habit formation. If activities are satisfying or pleasurable, Gardner says, we are logically more likely to do them regularly. But we may find different things rewarding after the pandemic than during it. For example, if you were home 24/7, cooking three meals a day may have felt like a nice pastime. When you’re back in an office, it may begin to feel like a chore. “If something is no longer rewarding, we may stick with it for a while and then slowly taper off,” Gardner says.
For some people, however, the pandemic may have served as a reset button. A 2017 study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that, after a 2014 labor strike kept many commuters from taking the London Underground, about 5% afterward stuck with whatever alternate transport they’d adopted as a replacement. This finding, the authors write, suggests that when people are forced to change course, at least a portion of them find better options and stick with them.
So may be the case post-coronavirus—lots of people have discovered they like remote work and at-home workouts, among other facets of pandemic life, and don’t intend to go back to their old systems. “We’re likely to stick to aspects of our pandemic lifestyles if they can optimize our quality of life,” says Jacqueline Gollan, a psychology professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine who researches decision making.
Indeed, while many people are itching to return to their pre-coronavirus lifestyles, others have realized there was a better way to live all along. That helps explain why houses are selling fast and furious as people relocate, and why about half of U.S. workers said in a recent Fast Company/Harris Poll surveythey’re considering changing jobs. All told, about 70% of people said in a 2020 Coravin/OnePoll survey that they’d learned something about themselves during the pandemic and more than half felt embarrassed by what they valued pre-2020.
Some changes may also be outside our control, happening subconsciously in response to the conditions of the last year. Skyrocketing levels of depression and anxiety during the pandemic could lead to lasting, population-level upticks in mental health conditions, as research shows happens after natural disastersand wars.
The extent to which traumatic events have a lasting impact varies widely from person to person, says Karl Pillemer, a professor of human development at Cornell University. Personality matters—some people simply find it easier to bounce back than others—as does someone’s lot in life. Logically, if someone faced great hardship during the pandemic, or lost out on significant future opportunities, they are more likely to bear scars than someone who was comparably well off, Pillemer says.
But even those who were mostly fine during the pandemic may see subtle, lingering changes. The Great Depression is an illustrative example. Like the pandemic, it was a highly disruptive, widespread, and long-lasting event that fundamentally changed the way people lived. And just as many people who lived through the Great Depression maintained values like frugality, the pandemic may leave behind its own fingerprints—perhaps germaphobia, wariness of proximity to strangers or increased comfort with solitude.
“There might be an epidemic of mistrust” after the pandemic, suggests Pillemer. Flawed pandemic responses caused many Americans to lose faith in their elected officials, and trust in the media is at its lowest point in recent history. Arguably more affecting, strangers have been equated with danger during the pandemic. Solitude, in these times, is safe; crowds and social interaction are risky. Particularly for young children learning about the world, Pillemer says, it may take concerted effort to undo that conditioning.
But Pillemer says he is optimistic it can be done. From wars to recessions to terrorist attacks, nearly every generation has faced traumatic events, Pillemer notes. After each, there are some people who face long-term psychological effects, and the mental health system must be set up to recognize and care for them. But the majority of people, Pillemer says, do return to a steady state once the immediate crisis subsides. In many cases, they even grow from it. “People who go through adversity, especially in later life, develop wisdom, ability to regulate their emotions, resilience,” he says. “It is remarkable how resilient people are.”
In fact, research suggests older people weathered the pandemic’s psychological challenges better than younger generations. During the pandemic, adults 65 and older reported lower rates of anxiety, depression, substance use and suicidal ideation than any other age group, according to CDC data. That’s somewhat counterintuitive, given high rates of loneliness and isolation among the U.S. elderly, but that fortitude may come from dealing with difficult situations before. They had a kind of “inoculation against stress,” Pillemer says.
No one would choose to live through a pandemic, and the world has lost a staggering number of lives and livelihoods over its course. Those losses should never be discounted. But for those fortunate enough to come out on the other side, the pandemic may instill this kind of strength, Pillemer says.
So will we be different when we’re no longer living with COVID-19? Yes and no. Most of us will, in all likelihood, return largely to our pre-pandemic norms. We will socialize and commute and eat in restaurants, even if those things feel inconceivable now. Some people will make lasting changes to their lives, both mundane and monumental. And, hopefully, many of us will hold onto lessons learned during this time—such that next time we are faced with difficulty, we may have a better understanding of how we can overcome it.
OR. . .
or NOT
SO. . .
NOT SO FAST. . .
Before moving forward
have a quick look back
take some inventory
DARE
keep some of the things
that made your life
not just bearable
but actually better. . .
NOT SO FAST
. . .don’t just take a quick look back
TAKE A LONG GAWK
and bring along some of the things
that kept you,
Y O U
PERSPECTIVE
A SIMPLE QUESTION :
JUST HOW DO YOU USUALLY READ A SITUATION. . .
FROM THE TOP
D O W N
o r
FROM THE DOWN
U P
Such a
s i m p l e
QUESTION
but the
A N S W E R. . .
JUST A BREATH
IT’S A REAL KILLER. . .
In fact, go ahead
TRY NOT TO DO IT
B R E A T H I N G
THE NOT SO NEW
R e s e a r c h :
Why Breathing Is So Effective at Reducing Stress
I recently read an article, and not the first about
BREATHING
by Emma Seppälä, Christina Bradley, and Michael R. Goldstein
and maybe it wasn’t because of the first time I had heard this
but the FIRST TIME
I heard it
BREATHED IT
this way. . .
When U.S. Marine Corp Officer Jake D.’s vehicle drove over an explosive device in Afghanistan, he looked down to see his legs almost completely severed below the knee. At that moment, he remembered a breathing exercise he had learned in a book for young officers. Thanks to that exercise, he was able to stay calm enough to check on his men, give orders to call for help, tourniquet his own legs, and remember to prop them up before falling unconscious. Later, he was told that had he not done so, he would have bled to death.
If a simple breathing exercise could help Jake under such extreme duress, similar techniques can certainly help the rest of us with our more common workplace stresses. The combination of the Covid-19 pandemicand battles for social justice have only exacerbated the anxiety that many of us feel every day, and studies show that this stress is interfering with our ability to do our best work. But with the right breathing exercises, you can learn to handle your stress and manage negative emotions. . .
AND YOU HAVE WHAT TO LOSE BY TRYING IT
(aside from a little
HOT AIR. . . ?
In two recently published studies, several different techniques were explored and found that a breathing exercise was most effective for both immediate and long-term stress reduction.
In the first study run by a research team at Yale, the impact of three wellbeing interventions were evaluated
- Breathing Exercises: in their experiments, they measured the impact of a particular program, SKY Breath Meditation, which is a comprehensive series of breathing and meditation exercises learned over several days that is designed to induce calm and resilience.
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction: a meditation technique in which you train yourself to be aware of each moment in a non-judgmental way.
- Foundations of Emotional Intelligence: a program that teaches techniques to improve emotional awareness and regulation.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three programs or to a control group (no intervention). They found that the participants who practiced SKY Breath Meditation experienced the greatest mental health, social connectedness, positive emotions, stress levels, depression, and mindfulness benefits.
In a second study, conducted at the University of Arizona, SKY Breath Meditation was compared to a workshop that taught more conventional, cognitive strategies for stress-management (in other words, how to change your thoughts about stress). Both workshops were rated similarly by participants and they both produced significant increases in social connectedness. However, SKY Breathing was more beneficial in terms of immediate impact on stress, mood, and conscientiousness, and these effects were even stronger when measured three months later.
Before and after the workshops, participants underwent a stress task that simulated a high-pressure performance situation, akin to presenting at a business meeting. In anticipation of the stressful performance, the group that had completed the cognitive workshop showed elevated breathing and heart rates, as expected. In contrast, the SKY Breathing group held steady in terms of breathing and heart rate, suggesting the program had instilled in them a buffer against the anxiety typically associated with anticipating a stressful situation. This meant that they were not only in a more positive emotional state, but also that they were more able to think clearly and effectively perform the task at hand.
Similarly, in a study with veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who struggled with trauma, it was discovered that not only did SKY Breath Meditation normalize their anxiety levels after just one week, but they also continued to experience the mental health benefits a full year later.
So what makes breathing so effective? It’s very difficult to talk your way out of strong emotions like stress, anxiety, or anger. Just think about how ineffective it is when a colleague tells you to “calm down” in a moment of extreme stress. When we are in a highly stressed state, our prefrontal cortex — the part of our brain responsible for rational thinking — is impaired, so logic seldom helps to regain control. This can make it hard to think straight or be emotionally intelligent with your team. But with breathing techniques, it is possible to gain some mastery over your mind.
Research shows that different emotions are associated with different forms of breathing, and so changing how we breathe can change how we feel. For example, when you feel joy, your breathing will be regular, deep and slow. If you feel anxious or angry, your breathing will be irregular, short, fast, and shallow. When you follow breathing patterns associated with different emotions, you’ll actually begin to feel those corresponding emotions.
How does this work? Changing the rhythm of your breath can signal relaxation, slowing your heart rate and stimulating the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain stem to the abdomen, and is part of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the body’s “rest and digest” activities (in contrast to the sympathetic nervous system, which regulates many of our “fight or flight” responses). Triggering your parasympathetic nervous system helps you start to calm down. You feel better. And your ability to think rationally returns.
To get an idea of how breathing can calm you down, try changing the ratio of your inhale to exhale. This approach is one of several common practices that use breathing to reduce stress. When you inhale, your heart rate speeds up. When you exhale, it slows down. Breathing in for a count of four and out for a count of eight for just a few minutes can start to calm your nervous system. Remember: when you feel agitated, lengthen your exhales.
While a short breathing exercise like this can be effective in the moment, a comprehensive daily breathing protocol such as the SKY Breath Meditation technique will train your nervous system for resilience over the long run. These simple techniques can help you sustain greater wellbeing and lower your stress levels — at work and beyond.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
TAKE A BREATH
or Three of Four
after all
all you have to lose is a little
HOT AIR. . .
Can’t Stop FEELING
Sometimes I feel like a severe
S H A D O W
of myself;
I see myself clearly
I’m just not so sure if I
K N O W
what I’m seeing. . .
Have you felt like that
over this past year. . . ?
Does that statement help;
make things clearer
or does it just throw more mud in your eyes
and make them
more cloudy. . .
on the verge of literally
SHORT-CIRCUITING
MARKHAM HEID, a writer freelance writer wrote a piece six years ago
well before a year of battling a Pandemic
that talks about that
HAYWIRE FEELING
He tells us, when it comes to quelling stress, there are dozens of research-backed remedies. But the most effective treatment is always going to be the one you can stick with, says Dr. Lorenzo Cohen, director of the integrative medicine program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
“Managing stress is not like taking antibiotics, where you take all the medication and then you’re done and cured,” Cohen says. “It’s a lifelong process, so you have to find something you can engage in regularly and indefinitely.” Even if every stress expert agreed that daily meditation is the optimal form of treatment—and that kind of consensus isn’t farfetched—it wouldn’t do you much good unless you could muster the time and self-discipline to practice on a daily basis. For a lot of people, that’s never going to happen.
Fortunately, in terms of its therapeutic power, meditation may not require a quiet room—just a quiet mind. . .which means you have to ask the question,
DO I WANT SUCH A QUIET MIND?
When you’re stressed, your brain races from thought to thought, and these thoughts tend to be anxious and infused with dread, Cohen explains. Maybe you’re freaking out about a work deadline or a family member’s declining health. The most effective stress remedies disperse those rapid, worry-filled thoughts by focusing your mind on the present, not on some calamitous future, Cohen says.
Meditation is a popular stress remedy because it’s all about this kind of mind-anchoring. But if you’re able to achieve that calm, quiet state of mind while running or weeding your garden, then either will be beneficial. One 2015 study from Dutch researchers compared physical activity to mindfulness meditation, and found them to be equally effective at managing stress. Even washing dishes can alleviate anxiety—provided your attention is focused on the task at hand.
On the other hand, research shows your gym session or yoga practice won’t chill you out if your brain is preoccupied with work or family problems while you’re doing them. “They’re still healthy practices, they’re just not beneficial in terms of stress,” Cohen says.
So what’s your best course of action? First, check out mindfulness meditation. There’s compelling evidence to suggest it really is the antidote to our frenetic, future-focused way of life, Cohen says. Even if you don’t stick with it, the stuff you’ll learn can inform everything else you do—from preparing presentations at work to planting flowers in your garden.
At the same time, regular exercise bolsters your psychological health in myriad ways. “The ideal stress treatment would be to have both exercise and mindfulness on board in your life, not one or the other,” Cohen says.
A third weapon in your anti-stress arsenal is nature. Spending time on wooded trails or in other natural outdoor environments—any place away from man-built stuff like streets or buildings—appears to trigger an immediate drop in stress, says Tytti Pasanen of the University of Tampere in Finland. More research shows just looking at photos of nature is enough to mellow you out.
As you might expect, combining exercise with natural outdoor environments seems to be especially great at combating stress, Pasanen’s research shows. “I would advise regular physical activity in nature, on a weekly basis if possible,” she says.
Mindfulness practices. Exercise. Nature. Combine all three, and your stress won’t stand a chance.
SOMETIMES
I feel like a severe
s h a d o w
of myself
like my thoughts are not mine at all. . .
The Dalai Lama recently said,
“Scientists declare that it’s human nature to be compassionate. All living beings who experience feelings of pleasure and pain ultimately survive as a result of love and compassion. If we human beings help each other, serve each other, with compassion, we’ll be happy”
. . .I’m not sure if that’ll cause you to meditate
or even think much;
here’s hoping you can
F E E L
I T
A HALLELUJAH MEMORIAL DAY
Happy Memorial Day.
How can you assure it?
One simple word:
R E-M E M B E R I N G
–literally, by putting together the Pieces of your Life that have meaning and significance to you the Ones who make those Memories worth
RE-Membering–Putting back together. . .
The World will debate and argue, but the greatest forces in and out of this World
are our Memories and the Love that makes those memories
significant,
meaningful
and always worth
observing and celebrating. . .
It’s easy to
J U S T
Limit these Memories to our Veterans
or for those who have recently died,
but any day we truly
RE-Member,
that we actually put together those snipets of
Once Upon a Times
and ‘Remember When’s’
that put all those glorious colors to the
Tapestry of our Lives,
becomes a true Memorial Day.
Like any Holiday,
it really is celebrated most,
not so much on it’s Noted,
Dated Day,
but when fully Recognized,
Realized,
Revitalized
again and again and again with,
yes, that one single,
beautiful thing called
M e m o r y
So, on this Memorial Day,
R E – M E M B E R :
It’s not enough for us to just merely
Remember,
but for us to just simply Re-Member one thought,
one memory
past Eternity.
T r u l y:
Give thanks not so much for those who have died;
but for those who still fully live within us all. . .
F i v e W o r d s:
H a p p y M e m o r i a l D a y. . .
T H A N K
Y O U
YOUR MIDNIGHT LIBRARY
The Pandemic hasn’t been all BAD. . .
BECAUSE IT HAS GIVEN ME MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO
R E A D
A voracious reader
from the even before I could read
I have loved books
and have loved passing on my
LOVE OF BOOKS
from the very first one
I can ever remember
having
To the one
I just started last night
And the
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
so many in between. . .
which brings me to the opening pages of:
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:
One of the reasons I’ve always loved reading
is because it
has inspired
WRITING
SPEAKING
FREE-THINKING
that I have no
ON/OFF
Switch
(and one I’m not seeking or ever hoping to find). . .
It’s made my
EYES, HEAR
NOSE, TASTE
EARS, SEE
IMAGINATION, FANTASIZE
IT HAS MADE ME
M E
and my idea of a perfect death
is having
FAMILY
FRIENDS
BOOKS
surrounding me. . .
It allows me
WONDER
as I
WANDER
and to
P O N D E R
even now
AM I MORE
IF/BUT
or
CAN/WILL
KIND OF A PERSON. . .
Y O U ?
So here’s the
D E A L
We have a Pen in our hands
with Blank pages before us
waiting not just for a written word
or a secret message
but that one single sentence
that can only come from
Y O U
THE WORLD
desperately needs to not have written
but
specifically
intentionally
purposely
intimately
R E A D
(NO PANDEMIC NECESSARY)
The Seeds We DON’T SOW
Sometimes the most important
S E E D S
there are
ARE THE ONES WE DON’T SOW. . .
It’s one of my favorite parables by
Megan McKenna
and by
SOWING
ITS
SEED
hopefully it’ll take root in you, too. . .
“There was a woman who wanted peace in the world and peace in her heart and all sorts of good things, but she was very frustrated. The world seemed to be falling apart. She would read the newspapers and get depressed. One day she decided to go shopping, and she went into a mall and picked a store at random. She walked in and was surprised to see Jesus behind the counter. She knew it was Jesus because he looked just like the pictures she’d seen on holy cards and devotional pictures. She looked again and again at him, and finally she got up enough nerve and asked, ‘Excuse me, are you Jesus?’ ‘I am.’ ‘Do you work here?’ ‘No,’ Jesus said, ‘I own the store.’ ‘Oh, what do you sell in here?’ ‘Oh, just about anything!’ ‘Anything?’ ‘Yeah, anything you want. What do you want?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ Well,’ Jesus said, ‘feel free, walk up and down the aisles, make a list, see what it is that you want, and then come back and we’ll see what we can do for you.’
“She did just that, walked up and down the aisles. There was peace on earth, no more war, no hunger or poverty, peace in families, no more drugs, harmony, clean air, careful use of resources. She wrote furiously. By the time she got back to the counter, she had a long list. Jesus took the list, skimmed through it, looked up and smiled, ‘No problem.’ And then he bent down behind the counter and picked out all sorts of things, stood up, and laid out the packets. She asked, ‘What are these?’ Jesus replied, ‘Seed packets. This is a catalog store.’ She said, ‘You mean I don’t get the finished product?’ ‘No, this is a place of dreams. You come and see what it looks like, and I give you the seeds. You plant the seeds. You go home and nurture them and help them to grow and someone else reaps the benefits.’ ‘Oh,’ she said. And she left the store without buying anything.”
Maybe we all need a trip to the
SEED STORE
where DREAMS COME TRUE
with the biggest question not being
WHAT SEEDS ARE YOU SOWING
or
WHERE ARE YOU SOWING YOUR SEEDS
so much as
WHICH SEEDS ARE YOU REFUSING TO
SOW
WATER
FERTILIZE
NOURISH
but expect just the same to
R E A P
It’s kind of like
making applesauce
with bananas
or a pineapple
and expecting it to taste like
Brownies. . .
A Dirty Hand
is no proof of a
SEED
SEWN
and most certainly
of one
grown or harvested. . .
Q U E S T I O N
How’s your Garden
(g r o w i n g)
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
See you at the
SEED STORE
. . .I hear there’s a
S A L E
(if you’re interested)
A LOTTERY WINNER
T H E Y
say you can’t win the
L O T T E R Y
if you don’t play. . .
I don’t let a lot of people know
in fact,
I believe this is the first time I
O U T T E D
this little tidbit about one,
CHUCK BEHRENS
I WON THE LOTTERY
It was Friday night
and I had to do some one stop shopping on the way home
and yes,
one of the items on my
TO GET LIST
was a Lottery Ticket
because it was creeping up to close to
$400,000.00
which like everyone knows
could do a lot of damage to debt
and a lot remedy for good
so after buying all of the
THIS’S
&
THAT’S
I was making my way up to the cashier
when I passed the CARD section
and a little guy and his dad were buying some
MOTHER’S DAY cards
and he played a little game of
PEEK-A-BOO with me
. . .of course, I forgot one other thing on the list and so
I snatched it and up to the Check Out line I went,
right behind my PEEK-A-BOO Buddy and his dad
who was getting to ready to pay for his cards
only to discover he had forgotten his wallet. . .
“Your dad is so dumb he forgot his wallet,” he was telling his son and then the he told the cashier he’d be right back. . .
It was my turn to enter the stage and repeat the only lines I never had the time to memorize:
“I’ve got this.”
“No, no sir you don’t have to do that. Really, I just live around the corner and I’ll be right back.”
“Sir, please do me a good. Let me do this for you. I’ve taken my kids ‘Card Shopping’ and forgotten my wallet and remember SomeOne doing me a good. Please, let me be selfish enough to do this. I guarantee you’re doing me a favor. I’ll feel way better for this than you.”
He thanked me
. . .yes, yes, with the words,
“THANK YOU”
but even more as he wheeled his son away in the cart
telling him just above a whisper,
“SEE, SON, I TOLD YOU THERE REALLY ARE GOOD PEOPLE IN THE WORLD YOU’LL NEVER HAVE TO LOOK FOR BECAUSE THEY’LL ALWAYS FIND YOU”
For a mere $7.55 I won the
L O T T E R Y
that night
that covered more than a lot of debt
and remedied more than just a bit of good
and
T H E Y
say you can’t win the
L O T T E R Y
if you don’t play. . .
Wanna BET?
G I F T E D
WHO DOESN’T LIKE BEING GIFTED. . .
especially when it’s unexpected
. . .it’s like getting a two sunrises in the same morning
a gift within the gift. . .
There are some gifts that are just too big to ever be wrapped; there are some gifts that when received, never have to be opened or unwrapped because they’re that much a part of you already.
Do you have such a gift?
Have you given such a gift?
Kelly, a good friend of mine recently suffered the death of her mom a few months ago and because it was quite suddenly, it’s a different kind of grief that she’s had to be bearing and wearing on herself. Living in Arizona and dealing with the fallout of her mother’s death back here in Ohio has put an added burden upon her, and yet, in many ways has helped her deal with grief in a much different and a much deeper way than she could’ve never had in any other way.
Is grief that gift that’s too big it can’t find wrapping?
If grief is a gift at all, it’s one we usually don’t want to accept or certainly give, and never have to be on the receiving end of. But then again, grief is a great reminder of what it is, that’s on a cellular level, very much a part of us; even more real than the words you’re reading, or the actual breath you just took without noticing (again).
Kelly has come back and packed up her moms house and gave away most of her mothers possessions to friends and other family that she thought might appreciate those gifts the most. She’s donated the rest to the Salvation Army so that those that never knew her mother still may be beneficiaries of the gifts that have been left behind and now forwarded.
I am the recipient of one of those gifts.
It was a picture that hung in her mothers ‘s dining room.
I never met Kelly’s mom, but I sure have known Kelly for long enough to know that some of the things that have made Kelly, well Kelly, are literally impossible without her mother. DNA and genetics for sure guarantee that, but then there’s that gift that can’t be wrapped only given and received that truly makes us who we are and more, ever becoming MORE OF. . .
Grief is a terrible thing to ever have to experience. We often don’t recognize it and we don’t volunteer for it, but at its best and deepest, it is the truest reflection of the love that we have and only really deepens and expands and never vanishes. THAT’S GRIEF. Not the tears. Not the ‘how comes’. Not the ‘why’s’ or the ‘what for’s’. The grief that often brings the saltiest tears, those tears never exist nor does the sense of loss, that deep sadness ever, unless there’s a love much deeper than all those things put together that even make those tears even possible.
So what’s your gift?
What is it, that someone will pass on to another, perhaps you’ve never even met before, that might benefit from the fact that you even existed? What is the I T in you that’s so big, you can never wrap, but once given, never has to be. . . ?
SEE THAT
BE THAT
FREE THAT
So that Others
can be beneficiaries of your
N O W
and not so much your
T H E N
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