How to Live

Have not had much time to write lately....I am in a bit of a mess.   Well, more than a mess.  Too many baseball games this week.  My yard is in desperate need of attention.  My house is a wreck.  Of course, it has been a wreck since Christmas, so I should probably let this go.  This last week of school is more than I bargained for and I still do not have a topic for my paper due on Friday.  I have an exam.  Blackboard discussions are driving me insane because the topic is professional boundaries.  This is a more than a hot button for me, it is more like a nuclear bomb.  I am very opinionated, passionate and intense about the subject of boundaries.  And I am speechless at  how few professionals understand much less have them. I am not sure what is needed more in this world, boundaries or critical thinking.  We seem to be lacking in both.    I suppose I could write about that but I fear that would bore the average reader.  I could write a novel on unresolved anger and how we fail to constructively express it.  I could write two novels on how to cope with abandonment.  And  I could write a how to manual on how to divorce a friend.  A skill every woman should possess.  I also could write very passionately about why you just can not say anything you want to to your friends.  It will hurt them and they probably won't forget.  But the messes we find ourselves in are not the point.  It is what we do with the messes that determine how we will live or not.

So, as you can see, I am in not a very good place this week.  It is funny how we will wrestle with our own demons and project them onto everyone else.  Second on my list of things to hate is the blame game.   I do promise to write more on this later when I am not so self absorbed.  But I will share a story from this weekend that did help me gain some perspective and perhaps will remind us all to practice gratitude in the midst of our messes...

He fled Uganda in 1978 with two children and daughter.  (The operative word here is fled).  His wife didn't survive.  He raised the two daughters as a single parent, taught, and a year after retirement, learns he has a very, very life limiting diagnosis.   I watch people face life limiting illness and chronic illness everyday and there are only three types of people.  Which type you are determines how you will live or not figuratively and literally. 

He still smiles, still says thank you, still reads his prayer book everyday and still says...All is grace and all is well...no matter what. He still finds space in his heart to give.  He is grateful for the day.  He is joy.  He is the first type and he will live well no matter what.  Of that I am convinced.  This illness may be difficult and shorten his remarkable life,  but he will live well in the face of it and continue to see the miracle in the everyday.

The second man lies in a dark room.  He is angry, which is understandable.  He is not pleasant, which is understandable.  He complains about everything and he has much to complain about.  He sees no good.  And some would say given his illness, he is correct.  And on one level he is.  He is alive but he is not living and probably never will.  I suspect he wasn't living before he became ill.  He will miss out on his life no matter how long or short.

There is the third type.  He is young, he was living his life fully, he was grateful and he smiled.  And he was dealt a horrible diagnosis.  He fought.  He became so angry he broke a wall.  And then, he used his anger positively.  He gathered himself.  He remembered that life was gift and he had alot of living to do even if he had to do it in a year, even if he had to leave small children and a wife...He determined to be grateful in the midst of it.  He was determined to leave a legacy of love and he would not waste a single minute of it absorbed in self pity, bitterness, anger or ingratitude. 

If I was a guessing woman, I would guess the second man will live the longest.   But he really will have never lived a life.  And that is sad.  And it made me think of a song.  And it made me think of a friend who told me once she hated this song because she was angry at life.  And I think that sad.  And in the middle of my messy, less than perfect days, I remember this song and I remember the friend who hated it and I feel sad for her.   Just remember dear friends it is how you live and that is your choice.

Kathleen