Are You Dead?

You are alive. Yes, we found you walking around, looking up at the sun, reveling in the sunshine, almost blinded by the light, you could not see what was before you.  It did not seem to matter. That’s why at first you did not see us or me.

We realize that you tried to take a short cut through life. Jumping from one growth spurt to another, and never really landing on your feet nor realizing just who you were. From relationship to relationship, job to job, house to house we knew that you kept looking for the real you. Feeling dead inside, you simply disappeared. We thought that you had not only taken leave but that you had died.

To our surprise we found you: walking, not running, like we had remembered you.

You were actually walking.

Walking. Taking a moment to breathe.

We wondered what had happened to you. Where you had been? How you found your way back? Please, tell us how you managed to come back?

And this is what he said:

“Well, I kind of was, like, dead. I just kept jumping. I kept looking for myself in others eyes, only to see their eyes and not me. I didn’t know who I was and I didn’t care. My days were filled with, well, you know, an absence of me.  They were filled with pleasing others, for sure.

Then, one day, I don’t remember the actual day, or the month or even the year, and it does seem so long ago. Anyway, one day, I was running, running from one place to another and I could not stop my self. If was as if my internal throttle was at full speed, I could not breathe…..and then, the strangest thing happened, my body lifted off of the ground and I was taken. By what or by whom, to this day I cannot tell you, I do not know. What I do know is that everything stopped. Yes, it stopped. I could see all of the movement down there. I could feel the vibrations and the gyrations of the Earth’s tumult that was stimulated by people, by their wars, by their hunger and yet, I also tasted their desire.

Reminded of my own desires, I realized that I had short-changed myself. I never took the time to look into my own eyes.  Like a mouse on its wheel, I just kept going with nothing positive in sight.  As I watched the Earth move, and felt the heat of the Sun, I knew that I had never taken the time to revel in the beauty that the sun bestowed upon me.  I never took the time to see how I looked when illuminated by the sun.

Then I was brought into a room of a dying man. People were all around him. Loved ones begging him to stay, while clearly he knew that it was his time to take his leave. No one knew I was there. And do you know what he said as his parting words?

Enjoy every moment you can. Don’t make work the way in which you identify yourself. You are so much more than that. I wish I had spent more time doing the things I enjoyed and less time doing what I felt I had to do. None of that matters now. I look back, and I think if only I could have spent more time with….

The Sun…
My Son…
Artwork…
Laughter….

And he went on and on and upon his last breath he looked at me and it was me. I shuddered. It was time to change the legacy that I was going to leave if I had a chance to return.

So for now, I will breathe in the sun, I will commit to walking and not running and I will live with a life filled with…….