Treasures all around

Recently, my aunt contracted a disease. It ravaged her body for about a year. Her treasure was stored for the life after this one, so last week she departed this life for her treasure. I am glad for her.

I have a friend with whom I take an annual trip. He recently called to relate some details of the trip that is coming up. These trips are treasures for me. They allow me to be with someone who knows me over a long period of time. All the conversation is honest talk. They help me steer the course through life just that much better.

I recently got to be with my family. We all live in far-flung towns and have work and schedules, so it is always a treasure when we get to be together on occasion through the year, but this particular gathering was heartwarming because all the plans and ambitions that we have expressed to each other through the years have begun to be realized by each one of us. It was an invigorating time.

Other special people become treasures in my life. They make me feel as if I live in the land of Xanadu, the lovely, tranquil paradise described in Coleridge's poem by the same name (although many people call the poem Kublai Kahn). There, rivers wind through lush scenery, waterfalls spray mist, the greenery of life is everywhere to be seen.

Life can be negative and harsh without a doubt, but I don't have to look far to see treasures in the people that surround me to shut out the otherwise austere environment.

The Gift Part 2

Gifts bring smiles to the face and glia to the brain. They make us feel warm to the core, and they lift our spirits. Our steps have more spring in them. They have the ability to turn the day completely around.

While material gifts can do this, it is the people in our lives as gifts that really make life worth living. I learned a long time ago that a person will have many friends. But, the gift of the friend that fits the description above is not usual - a rarity that may happen only at intervals in one's life.

I thank The Giver of gifts for the smiles, the glia, the warmth, and the lift I get from that rare and special person.

The Gift Part 1

Life has a way of changing an event in a matter of a second. I have a colleague and friend who was just enjoying her daughter's first year birthday party one moment when suddenly her daughter lost breath and turned blue. Immediately, the whole event changed. 911 was called. The ambulance rushed to the scene. Paramedics performed life sustaining techniques.

The scene could have been a very sad one. A close brush with death could have turned to less than a brush. But, occasionally life gives us a reason to smile, a wrapped gift that gives us huge relief. Such was the occasion this time. The emergency room stabilized my friend's one-year-old daughter and prescribed medicine. All was restored.

I am totally grateful for the life of this beautiful, precious child. I know that life can spiral out of one's control (not that a person ever has control over the events in life), so when a bundle of love is restored to health, I stand utterly grateful in the face of a great gift. To the One Who Breathes the Breath of Life, I say "Thank you!"

Molding the opportunity

There is a certain amount of truth to the saying "Opportunity knocks but once." It's not exactly true. But if the same opportunity knocks a second time, some features of the opportunity are changed. This I have seen. But, what I have mainly noticed about opportunity is that it comes in a form altered from a person's vision of it in some major way.

For example, if a person dreamed of a particular place (s)he wanted to go, and got the chance to go there, the reason for going would be totally different than the person had imagined. Here's a tangible example. My friend's wife wanted always to go back to a country in Africa. She got her chance, all right, but the circumstances were totally different from the first time she went and different from the reason she had always thought she would go back under. My friend on the other hand, has wanted to be married to someone of like mind after his first wife died. Well, he got his wish, but the circumstance of marriage has taken him on a track far afield of what he thought he would be doing with his life and training.

Ahhh! What to do when opportunity presents itself! The downside of opportunity is always different than imagined. I hate that the most about opportunity. What a person has been working toward comes and asks one to rearrange some of the most special and delightful parts of the current circumstance. Surely this can be negotiated. And surely it will so that the special part remains. There is nothing like determination! Even opportunity molds itself to the determined person!