MESSAGES

Clean My Air Ducts - Grow Blueberries - and Become a SWAT Team Trainer.  Email messages sent personally just for me this morning. Hummmm. Tempting!

Have you ever wanted to change your life?  Wanted to take on an entirely different persona and run with it!

That's how I feel this morning.Yesterday was a dynamo day.  Accomplished lots.  You know one of those days when everything seems to fall in place and there are more positives than negatives, and you know deep inside that it won't last, but you go with the flow because it is energizing and makes the adrenalin start pumping.  This morning at 6:30 this is not the case.  The battles seem uphill again. 

Tasks disappointingly not completed, a leak in my ceiling, deadlines not met, piles of paper removed from my  desks have been replaced with more and deeper piles.  So how do we compensate?  How do we adapt?  How do we adjust?  Or do we?  What is the price we pay? 

Then I remembered a conversation just last night with a medic just back from Afghanistan. He told me he "loves to love" and has a deep passion for loving all people. Over pork tenderloin and raspberry chipotle sauce, we talked of this passion and compassion and how you can't have one without the other, and we talked about the different levels of love and we talked of war.  He shared with me the story of a little girl in NYC that had fallen from a building and how he (an EMT) had held her to his chest and simply 'loved her.'  He shared with me that he is on this earth to 'listen.'  Not too many people do that.  They are too preoccupied with themselves and their cell phones and messages and text messages and on and on.  Too preoccupied with everything else in their lives but what really matters.  This struck home.  I have spent hours sitting in the ICU Burn Unit waiting room at BAMC with family members just listening.  For them, these people I never will see again, it made a difference.  I loved them in that time and space and I listened.  That was all they needed. They felt valued and cared for and heard. I listened and I heard and I understood what 'my' medic was telling me.

We all need to be listened to.  Really listened to.  But perhaps more than that we need to be heard.  This is where my value is.  This is what I to do.  But the price I have to pay to do this is what?

I too am too preoccupied with the little stuff, the insignificant stuff, the piles of paper on my desk.  The not doing of what I want to do because of all the 'stuff' that needs to be done.  The pages of my calendar are full of tasks to be completed, some urgent, some not, most necessary, some not.  How do we honor that part of us that cries out to be loved, listened to, and heard when all of these piles of paper confront us?  William Shakespeare wrote, "How far your candle throws its beams!"  But how far can the candle throw the beam when you get stuck in stuff?

As Emily Dickinson said, "I felt it shelter to speak to you."  My friend last night, thank you!  I don't feel so alone.  The passion, compassion, and myriad meanings of love, sharing, caring, and listening helped.  I don't feel so alone.

To you I say, "Those who live passionately teach us how to love.  Those who love passionately teach us how to live." - Author Unknown.

So for now, back to the business and busyness of paper.  The rest will wait.  Or will it?  Or should it?

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"The work of your heart, the work of taking time to listen, to help, is also your gift to the whole of the world."

Jack Kornfield

"You've touched people and known it.  You've touched people and never may know it.  Either way, you have something to give.  It is in giving to one anothr that each of our lives becomes meaningful."

~Laura Schlessinger