We meet many people during our travels.While some are just beginning to make their mark on the world, many are also nearing or already in their retirement. It can be a frightful time to be empty nested and to stop many of the activities that they have been doing for decades and now face an uncertain future.They seem to have either given up or hanging on for dear life to accomplish some of their dreams before the death knell calls.
What is it that makes the difference between a life lived and a life endured? I recently heard a short film where they reported the findings of interviews that they had had with the dying. “What is your biggest regret?” they asked. Each replied and surprisingly, the majority of people expressed that their biggest regrets were not what they had done wrong or the mistakes they had made in the past, but their biggest regrets were all the things that they hadn’t done, but wished they had. I heard a saying for a birthday greeting that said, “On this day, years ago, God looked down on the earth and saw that it was incomplete. It needed ONE more person and on your birthday it was YOU!” , ‘The day we are born is the day God decided that the world couldn't get along without us’. We are not born by accident. We all have something to accomplish in this life. We are all meant to mean something in the lives of others, and perhaps to history itself. , If not, what is the point of even being born! But how do we find this destiny that seems to elude so many of us? Last night I spoke with an older woman who told me about her late husband. A man who “didn’t speak much” she said. She told me about the book he wrote but never published and the next morning showed me the dozens of paintings he did and never showed anyone. “For a man who didn’t speak much he obviously had much to say!” I told her. I then told her about the irony that most of us are never appreciated as we should during our lifetime. “Recognition is a posthumous friend” I told her. I then suggested that she fulfills her late husband’s destiny and legacy by publishing some of his works on a Facebook page. For my part, I sometimes feel that destiny is like current. We have to find that jet stream, that water current, or those rail tracks that seem to propulse and direct us in the way that we should go. To find them may take at times some ‘letting go’, but at other times, it may require us to stiffen up and buck the tide. At the end of the ‘day’, the difference is made by having learned to recognize the signals; understanding when to buck the tide or let ourselves be carried by it.
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