A Lesson Every Day

There are lessons everywhere, if you're paying attention to the moment. Every moment. You can't miss one moment, because you might miss a lesson. And as my friend Frankie always used to tell me: "Isn't that why we're all here? To learn?!"

On today's Oprah show, there was a blind woman who went to Tibet to teach children. Amazing. Even more amazing was her answer to Oprah's question to her about her going all the way to Tibet on her own, to teach, given her own blindness.

The woman's answer was something like this: "That's the great thing about being blind.... you can't see the obstacles in front of you."

I thought that statement was very profound. Imagine having such a positive approach to one of life's greatest disabilities. Keep that in mind the next time you're complaining about a trivial pebble in the path of your life.


The other lesson today was at the end of a book I've been reading by Robert Inman. This author's books are written about people and places of the south, and I've read all of them. Wonderful, heartfelt stories, all of them. This latest one is called "Captain Saturday."

Near to the end of the book, as the main character is coming to grips with the untimely and accidental death of his parents (which happened when he was a child), he comes to the following conclusion as he's in a plane flying over the ocean where his parents plane had crashed and was never found:

"There were no tears. Instead, there was the dawning realization that Tyler and Rosanna (his parents) weren't out here, any more than if they were a pile of dust-becoming bones beneath a marble slab somewhere on land....... They were himself, part of his essence, their echoes and hauntings, and that was something he must consider carefully and at length in the days ahead....... And grieve over, if that's what it took. Grieve and celebrate..... They were himself and always would be. They were himself and his son..... The living part, that was the thing--- not what was lost, but what was left."


The most enlightening part of that paragraph to me was "The living part, that was the thing--- not what was lost, but what was left." My dear friend Frankie used to tell me that a person could ".... live eternally, live forever, live till the sun exploded...." as long as there was someone walking on the planet that kept the memory of that person alive.

One more extraordinary, powerful lesson, caught in a moment, because I was paying attention.