A few weeks ago I posted a blog entitled “Why it all happens for You”. The underlying message being that all events have purpose and the more you can see the purpose, the more your life is experienced with a peace and a flow from this understanding.
I bring this up again now because in the last few days, front and center, this message became very clear at home.
My Wife’s Aunt, Bobbie King (her mother’s sister), was doing something she loved, filling in substitute teaching English at a civic center to immigrants looking to become U.S. citizens. As many of you may have heard on the news, a gunman came into the Binghamton N.Y. facility and killed 13 people. Bobbie King was one of them. We got the news Friday night and Sunday morning my wife was on a plane with her mother to attend the funeral.
Bobbie King was a mother of ten wonderful children and grandmother to seventeen grandchildren. A kind and loving human being that never uttered a bad word about anybody and always had something positive to say to all who knew her. All you have to do is see the warm and gentle nature of each of her ten children to know what kind of a woman she was.
In speaking to my wife today she said she stood in the receiving line at the funeral with her mother and Bobbie’s family for over three hours as hundreds of people passed by and paid their respects. She said each and every person had the most loving and kind things to say about Bobbie. Each person was touched in some way by her gentle nature and loving and accepting heart.
You can never truly know the ultimate destiny or path of another person during your lifetime. Even for the people who are closest to you. All you can control is how you handle the moment to moment expression of your creative energy out to them. Life is a sea of constant change. Everything you love and enjoy in your life is on loan from the infinite source from which it emanated from. It all has a finite life to it. Whether it passes or changes from what are seemingly normal circumstances or the transformation or change happens from an event that is viewed as chaos or unnatural, change happens nonetheless. Therefore, there is no better time to express your love to all of it then now.
So you can choose to see this as a senseless tragedy of a beautiful life cut short, or you can see this as a wonderful opportunity to wake up further to the finite beauty that is all around you every day. You can use this awareness to be present with your loved ones and strangers a little longer, be more compassionate and less judging, smile a little bigger, worry a little less, love a little deeper and freer, and simply enjoy more fully the magnificence and miracles in life that surround and that are for you each and every day.
So tonight at my son’s little league game I smiled a little longer at him before he went to bat and hugged him a little tighter afterword telling him how proud I was of him. When my daughter left for gymnastics practice I kissed her forehead a little longer and made sure I told her how much I love her. When we all got home I let our dog Karma lick my face a little longer. And as I laughed as she did it her tail wagged a little stronger and she proceeded to make sure she didn’t miss a spot on my face. And tonight I breathed in the night air outside a little deeper as I wrote these words, being overwhelmingly thankful for all of it.
There is a beautiful purpose in all things if you are willing to look deep enough into them to see it. This shocking and tragic event has brought to light the wonderful impact one woman has had on so many lives. It is also to offer to you just how much impact you have everyday on those whom you come into contact with. What will you do with the gift of life you have now? What will you offer to those whom you interact with each day of your life? What will you see in this message that you have brought yourself?
While many of the hundreds, or even thousands, came to mourn Bobbie King’s tragic passing, even more importantly, they came to honor what she did with her gift of life each and every day; offer the fullest of her simple and gentle love to everyone who crossed her path. Whether she knew them or not….
More can be read about her here –
http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20090405/NEWS01/904050380
With the fullest of love,
Howard
Monday, April 6, 2009
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5 comments:
Wow, Howard, thank you for sharing this very personal event. My deepest condolences on your loss, and my applauds to your insight.
Once again this phrase rings so true; "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
Thank you Howard!
-JT
Thanks for sharing a valuable lesson for us all
I'm sorry about your loss, and I understand and don't wish to denigrate your caring and empathy toward the victims of this tragedy, but how can saying something like "there is a beautiful purpose in all things if you are willing to look deep enough into them to see it" be nothing other than a slap in the faces of the victims?
What could possibly be beautiful about what happened? Some crazy individual was armed when they shouldn't have been, and had they not been armed then your relative would have survived. There are plenty of people who probably are as caring as Bobby who die just as meaningless a death and do not have hundreds or thousands to mourn them.
Bjorn,
I completely understand your comment. Let me explain further. I never said that there was anything beautiful about what happened. What I did offer was that there is always a purpose that emerges from any specific event. Each person will take what they want from it.
For me it was a sense of gratitude for her life and for how many people she touched while alive. And it was also a time to reflect and be grateful for my own life, encouraging me to spread even more love in each precious moment of it.
While I certainly do not condone any horrific act or tragedy in the world, I also realize that I control how it affects me and what I take from it. For that reason I choose to see what allows me share more compassion and love in my world. A fitting tribute to a woman who touched the lives of so many by doing the exact same thing.
Best,
Howard
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