Unplanned Beauty

You cannot hold onto the moment, you can only make it last by knowing that the past is what you do with the present. So let the present define what you want your future to be. I wrote this tonight thinking about what life would be like if we knew that our moments are never lost, but changed by the future that is always appearing while our past is what is made of our present. It sounds more complicated than it really is because the past is often with us in our memories or those of other people or in photographs, journals, blog posts, or dreams.

Many times, what we find beautiful is what surprises us. It is unplanned, but we can choose how to accept it or what to make of it. We can be sad because it is fleeting, or fragile, or artificial or we can be amazed at how precious and timely it is. It can also be the realization that your life is changing, and that on the outset new realizations reflect new growth that you never thought was possible before.

I regularly volunteer at a comfort care hospice home where I provide care for residents and their families and friends who visit their loved one during his or her final days. It is a place where peace and love can be given and received not based on what one has done, but because one thrives with it. It is a place where the presence of light in each of us is made known as a beacon of hope or a reassuring comfort that one is not alone, when dying, or being with the dying. Many times while I am there, I find beauty in the moments that are fleeting, the moments that I can't always choose or create, but live with everything to experience and be an important part of.

This past weekend I spent two, four hour shifts listening and being with our resident, and her family. It can be a gift to step into the life of a family at such a moment where you meet loved ones knowing the tenderness and uncertainty of each day that may be someone's last. In these circumstances, there are many beginnings and many times to realize that this is all life is. The beginnings in new aspects of relationships, new chapters of life, beginnings of realizations, and the part of us that takes in another's memory as they pass on.

This may be all life is, but it is through our actions in it that it becomes something extraordinary. Lifting a child up in the air as he laughs, filling taco shells and sharing a meal with those we meet along this journey, crying with a daughter by her dying mother's bedside, hearing two men playing guitars and sharing what will be a memory worth reminiscing in the future, and knowing that what we do to live is what really matters, for life is not about just oneself, it is about everyone.

Unplanned beauty may be the most fleeting and it can be the most inspiring. It is where the light within our soul radiates through our being and connects to the instant we are no longer anyone else but ourselves, with our very personality, and knowing this is what we cannot hold, but what we can remember and make our lives with, both alone and with the human family.

Candles lit outside the hospice home in memory of  loved ones.