Hayter for September 3, 2023
“Nothing is impossible to know”
My kid sister, Jill, shared with me a life-changing message on Facebook written by someone who goes by the name of “Anonymous”. If the author’s suggestion captures the attention of everyone on the planet, there’s a good chance we’ll each live the rest of our lives in harmony, like in the old Coca-Cola commercial.
Right now I am going to share that harmonious message with you. I will use bold print for the author’s words, and normal print for my comments. – Here goes.
Anonymous: In about 100 years, we will all be buried with our relatives and friends.
I must assume that there is not a reader out there who will be alive a hundred years from now. If I’m not dead within 15 years, I won’t have a dime to my name.
Strangers will live in our homes that we fought so hard to build, and they will own everything we have today.
I don’t have that many valuables, but I’ve got mementos, sent by a few students and readers. The keepsakes meant a great deal to me, yet, the person who ends up with them may trash them.
Our descendants will hardly know who we were, nor will they remember us. How many of us know our grandfather's father?
I do not know the names of either of my great-grandfathers. Kay has completed much of our family trees and has located names that date back to the time of Columbus. I’m not related to Christopher, but Kay says that I could be Batman’s grandnephew. She said that so I would quit whining.
After we die, we will be remembered for a few more years, and then we are just a portrait on someone's bookshelf; a few years later our history, photos, and deeds disappear into history's oblivion. We won't even be memories.
History’s oblivion? If you had to teach a course on “The History of Oblivion” you would have trouble finding a textbook. Oblivion is “something that has been long forgotten and impossible to recover.” – “Okay, students, list five things that you can’t think of and never will.”
Kay and I had no children, so our oblivion will come much sooner than most of yours. I don’t know if I can live with that. – That was an “oxymoron”, a statement that contradicts itself.
If we paused one day to analyze these questions, perhaps we would understand how ignorant and weak the dream to achieve it all was. Always having more, but no time for what's really valuable in this life. If we could only think about this, surely our approaches and our thoughts would change, and we would be different people.
That is indeed a blessed logic. We’ve each changed in thought and abilities over the years. Had we not, we would’ve learned nothing during our lifetime. It is sad to discover all that we have missed in life.
Conclusion: I'd change all of this to live and enjoy the walks I've never taken, the hugs I didn't give, for our children and our loved ones, the jokes we didn't have time for. Those would certainly be the most beautiful moments to remember; after all, they would fill our lives with joy. -- And we waste it day after day with greed and intolerance.
I see the real message to be -– “We’re not dead yet, so there is time for you and me to get our rears in gear and do wonderful things; things that will make the rest of our remaining days more joyful.
I consider that a great message. Unfortunately, doing wonderful things can be difficult, or else we would’ve been doing them all along.. – You may have to actually talk to people. You know, mingle. Some of us don’t like to mingle. I have many family members and friends who are also infected with no-mingles.
But, there is something each of us could do in our own homes to make a difference in our lives and in the lives of others. Let your mind wander back as far as it’s able to go. Then start jotting down the people and events in your life that are responsible for some of the positive things that helped you along life’s rough highway.
For me, there were many. I recall the names of several people who made suggestions, mentioned a pertinent happening, or put in a good word for me that helped land me a job. And there were strangers who unknowingly directed me into areas I would’ve never considered, all of which put me where I am today.
I am now blessed, pleased, happy, and retired. And I have been living the last 52 years with the love of my life. Our meeting had nothing to do with Kay or me directly. There were simply situations that put us both in the same place at the same time.
Stuff like that has happened to each of us. We’ve been influenced by others in ways that we never intended. It’s my belief that that’s why each of us is here. We’re unknowingly providing suggestions that interest others to a point they never saw coming.
I’ve got a small card in my wallet with these words from Psalm 31: 14 & 15. -- “As for me, I trust in you, O Lord. I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hands.”
I know you didn’t ask for a sermonette, but I threw this in because it was on my mind. After all, each of us, believes in something, even if it’s nothing. –Wow. That’s another one of those oxymoron things. – Happy week.
End
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