Thursday, April 5, 2012

Do You Hear What I Hear?


Life is Short via happythings.com
 Lately, there have been many opportunities to grasp an important concept and grow with it.  Most of these come from chance words in conversations.  Observations about someone's actions either applauded or reviled hit a chord and stop me in my tracks.  I rarely hear the rest of the sentence as I try to grasp the concept of why these particular words are so important to me and what I am meant to learn from them. 

For important they are and I know I am supposed to pay attention.

There have been many such moments in the past few months, some I have taken the time to contemplate while others are circling above me and my hands are outstretched to catch them but they elude me for the time being.  I suspect I have enough to think on and they can wait for another day.  I want to stop my busyness, though, and find a quiet place so I can give these observations their due.  I know it will make me a better person.

When someone is talking about a friend or spouse or acquaintance - or even a stranger - and a facet of that person's personality is revealed, it can be like an ah-ha moment of recognition.  It begs for acknowledgement.  There, but for the grace of God, go I.  Or ew, I do that, too.  These are big deals if we are paying attention.  Anything which makes us squirm or gives us pause to assess our own actions helps us grow. 

Other comments feel like some kind of preparation.  After almost losing Bob in December, I am ultra-sensitive to what my friends are going through as they battle cancer, illness and job loss.  Alan's death last Friday due to pancreatic cancer was an eye-opener as was Nancy's husband's death in January.  We are all ill-prepared for this finality and the rebuilding that must go on afterwards.  While I think I want to be super organized and prepared, what I really want is to make the most of each day and dust be damned.

One would have thought that by this time, all the growing would be completed and I would have graduated, maybe not with honors, but with a well-deserved diploma.  But the voices still sing their siren song and I still evolve along with the refrain.