OUR TEACHERS
Philosophers ask deep questions of life.
Great minds unravel how and what of things.
Inventors ask, why not.
Explorers take us to new places, and leaders gather us together.
But it is our parents who start us on the road to who we will become.
They show us the window where we first see the world. They open the door on our questions of, why, what, and how.
We learn to love with their hugs and kisses. We learn our prejudices sitting on their knee.
Through them, we discover ourselves, yet we must push them away to find ourselves and our independence. We find that pushing away is not so easy.
We learn that our parents are human and fallible, and that they can hurt just like we can.
Life’s lesson is to accept that we are human and fallible as well; we forget too easily that others hurt just like we hurt.
We grow. We learn that growing pains are not just for children.
We learn, as we become parents, that a parent is always a parent and their child is always their child; we learn to see them through a different lens.
We experience our past repeating itself until we learn from it. We wonder why we need to learn the hard way?
Life’s task births children and buries parents. Birth brings joy; death deals sorrow. The universe balances.
We are confronted with the opportunity for the child to care for the parent as the parent once cared for the child. Our decision defines us.
And we see another side of love and what it means to love. We learn again to love yet in a deeper way; there is always a deeper way.
We learn again what love demands and what love costs.
We find that death always hurts the living, no matter a quick stab or a slow cut; one just takes longer than the other.
We learn through other’s death, that though the body dies, love is eternal.
Our hope is that through our life, our love lives on.
We see again, yet in a new way, that love circles all and embraces all.
We see again and in the same way, that without love, there is no point to life.
We repeat the lesson, as we seem to need to do, that love sustains us.
We realize all too slowly, that the point of our lives is to love and to be loved. Whatever does not help us dance life’s song, is a distraction.
God is love, and God made us in God’s image.
…How can we be other?
