Your Story

I know the ending.

 

None of us know when our story began. So how can we possibly think we know when our story ends?

Not one of us has any memory of the moment of our birth, nor of the months before our birth, yet we were alive.

And none of us can communicate what is happening at the moment of our death, and after our death.

Just as our story includes millions – billions – of memories that we cannot access from before our birth, so our story may create as many, or more, memories after our body’s death.

Can you prove me wrong?

Perhaps the age at which we understand the pain of loss varies from individual to individual, yet surely we all know it too soon.

And so we start our journey knowing it must eventually end in this physical, conscious realm, probably not comprehending how painful each loss will be.

If we did, would we still risk love? Is the journey worth the pain?

We are not meant to live our lives alone, safe, sheltered yet disconnected.

We are meant to share our lives, our unique gifts, until we cannot any more, regardless of the suffering we feel when those we have loved leave us.

And so it must be that the pain is meant for some purpose, something that lasts longer than these bodies we inhabit.

I don’t think we’ll understand that until after our stories here appear to end, just as we cannot understand the why of our existence before our memories begin.

 

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore