How often have we spoken about going through life as if we are sailing on a breeze? Many times we actually do relate to life as if it is a sort of cruise. Remember that famous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that spoke of our relationships as if we were ships passing in the night?
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
How true. Our life is like a sailing trip, sometimes battling into the wind, sometimes with the wind at your back pushing you along easily. To some extent Rod Stewart immortalised this concept of life in the Seventies with his song "Sailing" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li0d_jKC6Gc&feature=related), a wonderful song that has created more than the expected reaction in the world....it has somehow been associated with funerals! It seems that people have started to play it for their dearly departed because it reminds them of their loved ones but whom, though gone, we believe are now in a better place. (Just read viewers' comments beneath the video of the Youtube link above! )
What is Dying?
I once read this description of death which I treasured a lot and feel that it really reflects my thoughts.
A ship sails out of port, and as I stand watching till she fades on the horizon someone at my side says "She is gone!"
Gone where? Gone from sight, that is all. She is just as large as when I saw her. The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says "She is gone!" there are others who are also watching her coming. And other voices take up a glad shout: "There she comes!"
And that is dying. (Anon)
Lao Tzu had a similar comment to make about death in typical Eastern wisdom: "What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly." The beauty of this wisdom is that it emphasises the continuation of our life in a different medium, in a more glorious manner than we can imagine. So..Thank you Dad for simply being my Dad. I know you're reading this!
My friend Mary in New Zealand believes that "Life is 10% fact and 90% what you do with it". She adds that she uses this 90-10 Principle as her coaching motto because "… this means that 10% of what happens to you is beyond your control, e.g. the road works that weren’t there yesterday when you drove to work and that are now causing you to be late. However, 90% of your life is affected by how you react to the 10%. This is the part you always have control over. Do you get annoyed because the road works will cause you to be late for work or do you use the time more productively, knowing that you can’t remove the road works by your frustration, thereby enabling you arrive calm and relaxed?" So I suppose then that shared grief is therefore half the sorrow, but happiness, when shared, is doubled. There is, of course, tremendous happiness in making others happy, despite our own situations. Hence the beauty of sharing a song and a thought with others to make them feel better.
The Good Book reminds us that ….You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God you will receive that He has promised (Hebrews 10:36). And, I suppose, that can be also seen as our reward for the various occasion when we die to ourselves too, hard - and illogical by today's standards - as that may be! But, as they say, that is a story for another occasion.
