It seems that this four week holiday I have before me at the time of writing, the timing of it, is no coincidence. Mortality and suffering is at the heart of it and so I suppose my first responsibility to myself is to be compassionate, since all I can do is resign myself to the truth that it is not seemingly going to be the restful one I expected it to be when I booked it a couple of months ago.
Many of you reading will not be aware that I lost my half brother about three weeks ago under lamentable circumstances which I won't dwell upon here. My father is going into hospital for the day, a relatively minor operation on the morning of writing this, and in spite of recent CT scan results my girlfriend and I have what I believe to be around a 90% chance of facing the return of her cancer, which we have been in combat with since summer 2016. It seems that life is not being fair at the moment and I find myself working hard to remind myself that there is no fair or right and wrong in life without a mind lazy enough to qualify such platitudes. There is no point asking why or how this happens, only the will to see these things through. As you might imagine I am both succeeding and failing in this respect, a pretty normal state I think in life for us all. To have some parts of your life suddenly wrenched away and others taken a piece at a time is mind numbing to say the least. Yet it is remarkable to me that the strength to surf these events exists at all. Being a spectator to it all is a horribly humbling and guilt laden experience. There's no wonder that such things leave people, both spectator and participant feeling victimised and set up. This is perhaps the lesson for us all - to realise that if there is no fate or preordained unfolding, only the cause and effect of life, that there can be no stronger evidence that we should have compassion for one another at all times. Dwelling upon this may serve to make you aware or keep you mindful of the pain which we all experience on a daily basis by avoiding or denying our interconnectedness. Whether you choose to accept and embrace that pain as a means to justifying your personal effort to set aside anger in favour of understanding and compassion is a point of meditation I want to leave with you via this little insight.
It's often said that we know little of other people's battles. I personally cannot find anything to better express this notion than in the sharing of this moment in my life and I'm sure I'm not alone in such a scenario. My wish is not a generic platitude, but a very directed one. Love one another more - not because you never know what is around the corner.. many people pass that meme around. I want you to love and have compassion for one another because it is a choice. You have freedom of choice every day. The only freedom you do not have in life is freedom from the consequences of those choices, which is why I implore you to choose well. So many people rant at some form of fate instead of realising that the choice remains with you as a person to live intentionally, positively irrespective of the unknowable. Don't live well with compassion because you don't know what's coming, live well with compassion because the power rests with you and those around you to make things better in spite of the unknowable, by sheer force of will. This is what makes those who live in ivory towers so despicable and cowardly to me, yet I recognise that they too are not free from suffering, but seem to be in a losing fight to block it out with money and power, ignorant of their self harm as well as harm to others. We can all do better. My simple hope and calling to you out there is to choose what is right. You know what that is, under all the layers of bias, under all the rhetoric. Without compassion and empathy we are nothing. That is the gift inside life itself. Don't squander or deny it.
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