Dave's Deliberations: Life Goes Softly…

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Life Goes Softly…

Life is a gift but we often feel we should be able to hold it in our own hands, unwrap it whenever we want and play selfishly with it so that we might find gain without ever feeling or experiencing pain. Anyone can steer a ship through a calm sea but it takes a master to find safety within a storm. While life provides us with a plethora of opportunities, it also gives us just as many challenges It allows us to feel great joy and promise but also can leave us feeling insignificant and meaningless. We tend to compartmentalize both our thinking and our potential when we focus upon how many breaths we are given in life or try to understand why breath may have been taken away from those we love far too soon (often selfishly questioning why it has been allowed to continue in others we may not so fully embrace). We must recognize that unless (and until) we open up our horizon to a world of possibilities rather than focusing upon our (perceived) undeserved suffering, inequity or unfairness we will be unable to find moments that (in a good way) take our breath away.

Life can be full of both happiness and grief – both the beauty of the Creator and the loss that accompanies His creation’s departure. When we take time to recognize the surroundings in which we live we can see incomparable power in the mountains, rivers, lakes and oceans...the peaceful silence that a forest provides...the support that a close friend or partner might give to us yet we will also experience the hollow feelings that a broken friendship, a shattered dream or one’s unexpected death can leave behind. Throughout the pandemic’s disruption we were brought to the heights of this world when a loved one’s sickness was overcome yet brought to our knees when one far too young or significant to us may have been taken away.

As humans, we have an issue of control – wanting to control all things that touch our lives so that we can have what we want when we want it. As a point of reality, we must recognize those things we can control, those things that are out of our control, and seek the wisdom to know the difference. It is during these times of hope – of a return to what we might consider normal as the pandemic draws to a close – that many are haunted by things they do not understand nor seem able to control. We can become overcome by grief or loss that was not expected and unexplainably left our lives empty or shattered. As life goes softly, fulfilling its course and validating its purpose, we must think about not only what is happening but why it might be occurring in our otherwise ordered and structured lives. We must learn to seek the good – perhaps even try to find the good within each unexpected bad thing that might happen – yet realizing that as life goes softly by us it can leave a path of destruction in its wake. We cannot see its winds, we can only feel them and experience what has been left behind as we move forward. Sometimes, when we reflect, we can sense life’s winds touching our faces and, if we truly take the time to understand those things we can control and accept the reality of those that we cannot, might actually feel the breath of the night as it passes. That is the intent of this poem – to step back so you might take time to be one with yourself AND your world...written out of thoughts and memories of sorrow but recognizing that life truly goes softly as we move forward through it.

The Breath of the Night…