Don’t Look Back
These days, these days right now- they are our better days. I know it doesn’t always feel like it. I know that sometimes it’s very difficult to find the good and to find the gifts.
I know that, and I often live that difficulty, relieved to fall asleep at night and simply be done with the day when something’s been particularly hard.
But I’ve wondered many times what my brother would have done differently had he known that we wouldn’t be traveling into our 40th decade together, and that he’d leave at 39.
What might he have tasted more of. Enjoyed more of. Laughed at more. Appreciated more. Cared less about. Let go of easier. Found higher perspective on.
How might he have shaped his path differently?
I don’t write that from the perspective that he has regrets about his life; in fact every time I’ve sensed his in the afterlife he is nothing but joy and love and peace and content.
No, I write those words for myself and anybody else who they resonate with, so that we are exhorted and remember to live without regret as much as we can while we are still here.
To live with appreciation. To take risks sooner rather than later if our heart is calling. To transcend our own mental chatter that says, I can’t, and believe in something bigger than ourselves that says- If you’re soul is telling you to go- than Yes. You can.
To embrace our own unfolding. To embrace our own unknowings. To embrace each jot and tiddle and line that composes the story of us, even if we don’t quite know where that story is going.
Some days I want to be a thousand steps from where I am. On top of the mountain, instead of at the half-way point. I want to be more than the version of self I currently inhabit, as if I will somehow be better then.
Then I have to take a step back, take a deep breath and remember- our better is now. Our better days are now. Each day a brand new possibility that can never be relived or reclaimed.
Sometimes I can feel my brother in those moments- he’s so filled with radiant love that my humanness can barely conceive it; it’s like trying to divine the true brightness of the sun by looking at a picture. But he’s still so close and clear it is as if he’s sitting right beside me, and I can hear him pure as a bell in my mind’s eye-
You have to grab onto it Little Sister. Your life. Take it and run with it and go as far as you can. Remember the love, and don’t look back.
(Note: the above is a passage from my upcoming book Transformations of The Sun: 122 passages on finding new life after loss. Since life is a single focused frenzy of editing the book in order to get it into my publisher by the end of next week, I’m not writing much else, and so I thought I’d share a passage in lieu of this week’s blog post).