Please Pay Attention...

Your Future Self is Calling You

Every person you meet in the course of your lifetime has an impact on you.  There are those people, that when you meet, you have no idea that your life will be changed in some way forever.  There are those people that come and go quickly never to be seen again.  There are those people that you meet and think you will not see again and they become the most important people in your life.  There are those people that are in your circle of love forever and move in and out of your daily life like the tides of the ocean.  There are those people that you feel will be with you always and they disappear unexpectedly or circumstantially. There are those people.. .you fill in the blank.  People are important.  Honor the people in your life.  All of them.

People people people are what make the heart heal and break and grow and love and learn.  It is people who influence and experiences and shape your path in ways that are both subtle and profound. It is in the meeting and the sharing that is the present moment.  Savor it and appreciate it.  Love it and adore it.  Breathe in each person as if they have a new part of your life to unfold for you. 

It is in paying attention to the connections and opening to curiosity as that of a child that the magic and power of Presence and People will be revealed. Over time, the connections and reflections give pause to understanding and inspire the respect for each encounter. 

I am reminded of T.S Eliot's Four Quartets:

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
       You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstacy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
       You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
       You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
       You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

In contemplation and gratitude, here is another poem for the sharing offered to me recently by my college professor, Michael Glaser, who has had SUCH an overwhelmingly and unexpected influence in my life it is beyond explicable and I am forever indebted to his generosity and graciousness in how he shares his passion for the human condition of love and loss and extraordinary living.

No, no there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

-- Wendell Berry --

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