What do you want… to Embrace?
Dedicated to Michelle who quietly taught so many what it truly looks like to live a life of service and love of others. She truly lived, loved, and left the most wonderful legacy.
Embrace. What a nice word. What a truly lovely word. Conjures images of holding your beloved in your arms, feeling them close to you.
To live a fuller life, we are called upon to embrace many things, and we choose to embrace many more.
Embrace Your Homeland
We are called upon to embrace the laws of our homeland and obey them. We can, of course, choose not to. Frankly, all too many people do. They think the laws don’t apply to them, so they run roughshod over them. Some even get away with it, at least for a while. Often, the law catches up with them.
Embracing the law and the customs of our country goes far beyond simple “good behavior.” There’s the concept of patriotism, which binds us together with all other citizens of our country. It sometimes takes a challenge to get many people to appreciate the value of patriotism. It’s all too easy to come to take it for granted.
But imagine someone living in a war-torn country like Ukraine. Every day come new attacks. People gather together in an effort to protect one another. When they fail, they come together to help each other’s families mourn their dead. Many have celebrated the patriotism and the heart of the Ukrainian people, though that still hasn’t caused anyone to take effective action to put a stop to the attacks.
In a democracy like ours in the United States, different people often define patriotism differently because they have different beliefs, and they embrace different values. Some may embrace no values at all. In a democracy, everyone has the right to express their beliefs and their values, and to strive for the way of life they prefer. This creates friction between factions, which is why a democratic republic like ours faces internal conflict so frequently.
My thought is that there is one important value that, if embraced widely, could reduce the strife and make it easier for everyone to come to more agreement. That is the simple idea that it really is just fine to do just about anything you want, as long as it doesn’t harm or negatively impact anyone else. My observation is that this is an element left out of the thinking of the more radical, extreme elements of our population.
Embrace Your Religion
There is a certain temptation to suggest that we embrace God here, but many don’t base their religious beliefs on a concept resembling God. In fact, some base their beliefs on embracing the idea that there is no God.
Others find great comfort in embracing a loving and merciful God. Others, like myself, believe there is something active within our universe that designed, developed, and maintains all the wonders we see going on around us. There are just too many elegant designs that I cannot accept as being something that “just happened.”
Sometimes I’m called to wonder if this great creator is actually paying attention. Recently, a young person I deeply love lost her valiant battle with cancer. Her family, her friends, and all the lives she touched and helped grieve for her and miss her terribly. Why was someone so committed to a life of service to others, who loved with her whole heart, and who gave effortlessly to anyone in need, why was she taken so soon. She had decades more lifetime in front of her to share with and embrace her loved ones, and everyone else around her. She was never mean-spirited, nor given to negativity of any kind. Even as she battled a monstrous disease she never lost hope, she always believed that she could win the war.
She embraced her beliefs, and still she died.
I cannot hope to make sense of this loss, or the embrace the intentions of an all-seeing, all-powerful, always loving God. I long ago accepted that there are things far beyond my limited comprehension. What was going on just before the creation of the universe? Where did that take place if the universe didn’t exist yet? How does time really work? And I have become comfortable with the idea that if there are some things I cannot comprehend, there can be others. Like, maybe, God. And maybe even “God’s Plan” though I cannot for the life of me even imagine a set of circumstances even beyond my comprehension that would call for us to lose such a wonderful human being so young. That’s something I just cannot embrace.
Embracing Impermanence
It would be all too easy to expand my thoughts about losing a wonderful, vibrant young woman to include everyone at all times. Why should anyone have to die ever? Why can’t we continue to embrace life for the rest of time, whatever that is?
Someone, a teacher, far wiser and more insightful than I started thinking about this more than 2,500 years ago, and his observations were so wise and so compelling that his students took to writing them down and perpetuating them down through the ages. His name was Siddhartha Gautama, though most of us know him better as the Buddha who found enlightenment sitting under a bodhi tree.
Before you think I’ve gone off and embraced a whole new religion, please know that I don’t feel comfortable with any organized religion, including the one I was born into. I personally feel they are creations of men meant to extract money more than to worship any concept of God. So, no, I have not gone off and become a Buddhist.
However, Siddhartha was a very wise, insightful person who never claimed divine access or lineage. He never even suggested that he was a deity. He was simply a teacher, and much of what he taught makes incredibly good sense when you examine it with an open mind.
In this case, the Buddha pointed out the obvious, that nothing lasts forever. Everything has a beginning and an end. It is inevitable. He suggested that instead of fearing our end, that we come to embrace it and let it drive us to make the most of every moment of life we have. Many have heard the concept of “living in the moment,” or “living in the now.” Buddha simply suggested that there’s no point in ruminating about the past, for we cannot change it. There’s little sense in worrying about the future, because it may never come. All we really have is the present moment, and we need to derive as much joy from that moment as we possibly can, because we will eventually run out of them.
I truly believe the beautiful soul we lost understood this perfectly. I find comfort in remembering all the times she created joy for all of us with her love and her laughter and the way she worked so hard to make sure that everyone around her knew how important they were to her, and how very much she loved them.
Embrace Your Community
Since her passing I have experienced the joy of watching all the many friends she drew to her in her community as they came to help the family mourn, and to prepare for the future without her. Seldom have I seen so many friends contributing so much to a grieving family. It may sound like a cliché, but it truly warms the heart to see a community pull together so strongly for one of their own.
Communities like that don’t just happen. It takes people leading from the heart to create the wide- ranging love that brings people together to embrace each other like this. It is so reaffirming that such communities still exist.
So, as you think about what you want to embrace in your life, I hope you’ll strongly consider embracing impermanence because it drives you to seek happiness while you can, and embrace your community, because few things can bring you more happiness.
This is a beautiful tribute to your friend, Michelle. Some of the legacy that she left shines on through your words.