Living through an American Recession

Dealing with never ending life changes. Who says making lemonade is the best thing to do with those lemons life throws at you?

Thursday, February 2, 2012

A missed lesson in Compassion & Patience?

Today as I scrolled my Facebook page I noticed a girl who made the following post:

"Craving ice cream so I went to the grocery store for some.. Only one lane open and I get stuck behind some old lady with a stocked up cart. I go to put my ice cream on the belt and all I see beside my ice cream is her diaper pads...Yup, craving is gone!! Bleck!! I dont wanna get old :(( I put my ice cream back and left.. Thats Gods sign for bc I didnt run today!!" - Anonymous

As I scroll back in the history of my life I see too that once upon a time I thought like that. It's easy to "see" only what we want. Fact is, we're ALL going to get old, end of discussion. I guess my life changing POV came when I worked in assited living with seniors. It was an amazing eye opening experience. My eyes would scan the walls of degrees, old photo's of them that looked like a previous lifetimes and some sad smiles feeling sad they can't scuba dive anymore. Seniors are amazing human beings with stories Hollywood could use to make epic movies from.

Never fight aging, embrace it. Aging is wisdom, fine tuning our thoughts, changing our reactions to life with the ever changing POV. I know someday she will see that and let it go.

As I made my rebuttal to her post: "Perhaps it was compassion & patience that was missed here. Respect should be given to seniors who built this country and gave us opportunites they created."  I figured she would respond with a "screw you" type post but instead I got:

Her: "I know that will be me someday.. That's why I said I don't want to get old... My biggest fear in life..."

Me: "Aging people are wise and happy, old people are angry and withdrawn from life...Be joyfull and keep a sence of humor and you will age into something beautiful beyond your imagination."

Her: " :) "

My lesson here. Be a possitive light to other people. If you are angry and I am happy, it's my duty as a compassionate human to remind you that life is good and all darkness passes. When I am angry, I hope I find other compassionate people to remind me of the same thing. No one is immune to suffering, we all need to help each other even if it's just a kind word to make someone smile just for a minute. Suffering is perpetuated when others turn away from us.

No comments:

Post a Comment