Tag: miracles

But I Don’t Wanna

Getting up and on with it every day is a choice. Even raising the question may baffle some people. “Of course, we have to get up every morning and face the day.”

No we don’t. Not really. And therein lies the miracle and mystery of our lives.

It has been a long time since I heard the phrase “will to live.” We have not been actively and daily engaged in close-to-home wars or other mass traumas that provide us with examples. Yet I believe it is still very much a thing. How else does staying alive make any sense after heart shredding and gut-wrenching losses?

I watch in wonder at beautiful young men and women whose limbs have been blown off in foreign lands. They come home to recover and rehabilitate. What they have to recover from defies understanding. How they manage to go through the rehabilitation required to re-engage in their lives stupefies me.

These young men and women are lucky enough – if you can call it that – to have well-supported systems in place to aid in their recovery. And they go through recovery with fellow travelers dealing with similar injuries. They help each other find a reason to keep on living and moving forward.

War has always been riddled with stories of hope and recovery even in the most miserable and bleak conditions imaginable. I recently finished watching the mini-series The Pacific on Netflix. Not only did I not know much about the skirmishes that took place in the Forties in that part of the world, the story unfolds unsparingly episode by episode in reflecting the horrors of war.

I winced (as did any others who watched the series, I am sure) during a scene where an American Marine tosses rocks into the open skull and exposed brain of a recently killed Japanese soldier, sitting upright with his rifle still in his hands.

I did come away from that series with a better understanding of why veterans share such a deep and intractable bond. Sharing extreme experiences can do that.

Parents whose children were murdered in mass shootings. Victims of natural disasters. They likely use the same god-given techniques to get through and live with it. That experience was and would always be “theirs.”

Opportunities for extreme bonding generally diminish as we get older. Gone is the fresh blush and deep impact of first experiences (reflect on your first kiss or lover). We are more open and malleable in youth.

In fact, a key part of staying “young at heart” is remaining open. Which can be quite a challenge. Many people don’t even bother.

I recently attended a high school reunion where it was exciting and fun to catch up with our remaining high school buddies. The telling part was the stories of those who are still around and didn’t come. They hated high school then and saw no good reason to relive it now in their dotage.

Fair enough. But that attitude comes at a cost to everyone. Both themselves and those of us who missed seeing them again. It is very likely now that we never will.

We eventually learn to roll with life’s punches. We realize loss is a constant as life continually renews itself. “Out with the old, in with the new.” Like leaves in autumn, our friends start falling from the tree of our lives. Celebrities who defined our adulthood start to leave, too. Ryan O’Neal most recently.

Even political stalwarts like Henry Kissinger and the first woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor have recently died. (I recall trying to reach her by telephone for the better part of a day for an interview on CBC-Radio when she was first appointed back in the Eighties. My calls were not returned. A missed journalistic coup.)

So this morning (if it wasn’t obvious), I didn’t wanna get up and face the day. No harm would have been done by me whiling the day away in bed. I’ve done it before. But, no. There is a “to-do” list to face. And a husband to make coffee for. And a blog post to write. And Christmas looming.

We may never fully understand and appreciate what external and internal forces get us up and moving forward every day. But I’m sure our will to live has something to do with it. And our tacitly held expectation of pleasant and happy surprises. Especially around Christmas.

This season of light and miracles practically demands we engage with or at least acknowledge the beautiful mysteries and possibilities of life. That’s enough to get me up and going on most days even as I balance less beautiful challenges with utterly no mystery.

It is all part of the whole that we eventually learn to accept as life. Both the astonishingly good and the horrifically bad.

A line from the poem Desiderata sums it up: “With all of its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”

On it – even if somewhat sleepily and reluctantly this particular morning.

Decisive Element

Haim G. Ginott says what I believe to the absolute core of my being. We are the decisive element in our lives. We often play with that power like children handling dynamite. Often for years. Often for our whole lives.

Recognizing and harnessing our personal power can push us to stand down from our automatic reactions and nurture an internal shift in perspective. It can require some years to begin to consistently see “ordinary” things as miraculous.

To watch a brilliant red cardinal frolic on a tree branch with its devoted and dowdy mate.

To watch my adult son – as I did last night – feed mushrooms to his pet tortoise, Sheldon.

The birth of anything. And sunsets. OMG sunsets that take my breath away and overwhelm with a sense of awe over their dazzling and transient beauty.

That said, owning that we are the decisive element in our lives and in the lives of others is a lot of responsibility to put in the hands of one puny, little human. We all have that power, if only we choose to recognize and own it.

Some days are easier than others to appreciate the impact we have on others and in our own lives. The state of our inner state and how that manifests in the world can be the truest litmus test of health and a balanced state of well-being.

There is a synchronicity that seems to follow me when I am feeling settled and at peace inside. It can manifest as simply as it did for me driving home last night. All of the traffic lights – and there were many – turned green one after the other on my drive home in what felt like a kind of choreographed ballet.

It is easy to dismiss that sort of thing as a non-event or coincidental or meaningless. You might more readily appreciate its’ miraculousness when you have had the opposite happen and one traffic light after the other ominously and consistently turns yellow or red just a few yards away from the crosswalk. So we sit. And sit.

We can choose to see something like choreographed traffic lights as mini-manifestations of miracles in the way Albert Einstein identified:

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” 

I struggle with that truism and strive to see the miracles in my daily life. And when I do, it is noteworthy how often traffic lights progressively go green one after the other as if I have personally orchestrated it.

Not saying precisely that manifesting miracles is a true superpower we all have if we but recognize it. Not saying it isn’t neither.

But when such mini-miracles happen in my own life, I am happy to be open and accepting enough of these “free gifts from the Universe,” to note them and to appreciate them. Whatever the source and wherever they come from.

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.

It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.

I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.

If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming. ~ Haim G. Ginott

(Book: Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers https://amzn.to/44hmeSt)