Remembrance has become a huge, multi-billion dollar industry. We erect memorials both to fallen heroes and politicians with questionable ethics. We send cards to mark special occasions. Whole religious traditions, both good and bad are based on the remembrance of spiritual teachers. And why else do we celebrate wakes and funerals but to remember the dead?
On my morning walk today I met up with a neighbor walking his dog. He’s about 50 years old. As we walked I asked him what his biggest concern in life was. He said it was to make a difference for his family and ultimately for the world….to be remembered as having mattered. This concern is almost universally felt by men in mid-life. They’ve often pushed forward with the ambitions of youth and now they wish to focus on the deepest virtues can shift souls in the second half of their lives.
I too hope to be remembered by the few people I’ve touched in a positive and radical way. That’s one reason I’m a life coach. But I’ve recently come to realize that it’s in this moment, right now, that I can make the biggest difference. Each act of kindness I practice, each time I recognize full-out the soul of another, each time I empathize with their plight even though the mess they’re in may be their own fault, I am bringing vibrations of positive remembrance to life.
I believe that every effort I make for the welfare and good of another carries with it a strong wavelength of love that can actually promote the healing of an emotional or spiritual wound. My heartfelt positive regard of the other, no matter how it’s construed or acknowledged, is for me the ultimate means of remembrance.
And it’s not the remembering of me in particular. Rather it’s recalling the sense of human/divine connection. It’s the promotion of the love, kindness, and attention that we all need.
I am particularly pained by the suffering of many in the African-American community. Isn’t their justifiable outrage due to not being seen as individuals, not receiving basic human kindness and empathy at times, whether dealing with bureaucracies or being arrested for a crime? When someone fails to “see” our soul, when we feel objectified, when encounter robotic service from a so-called “service industry”, don’t we all get a bit enraged? How can you be more conscious of your power to heal through intentional love?