Sixteen years ago for my 50th birthday, my sister Sherry asked some family and friends of hers to write something about me so she could bind it up and give it to me as a gift. Very thoughtful. And beautifully put together with many of her sketches and drawings.
Earlier this year, as I was cleaning out the garage (a seemingly non-stop process going on 20 years now, since the year we moved in), I came across her gift and put it aside to read later (perhaps for the first time) which I did a few days ago.
I couldn't bring myself to read all of them, but the ones I read were very nice and it was obvious that people for the most part had put a great deal of time into thinking of what to say. All of them were really wonderful, but two of them were my favorites.
The first was from her friend Craig who wrote, "I can't recall with any degree of certainty whether or not I ever actually met your brother though I do remember you telling me that he was planning to ride his bike across the country. I'm not even sure whether he did it. But anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the young man! (Ed. Note: I don't believe we ever did meet, but I appreciate his effort regardless.)
The other favorite was, sadly, unsigned, but what the person wrote was stunning. Among other things, the person wrote: "There are all kinds of things I do in your honor. I think of it as a commonality between us; doing things "in honor of". I think I told you, but it bears repeating, my therapist once asked me to list the people I most admired. I told him that I wanted to be like Gandhi, or you. It would be too mushy for me to outline those characteristics. You have to wait 'til you're on your deathbed."
And then the person went on to list all the ways I became a better person than when they first knew me back in the 1970's. So on the one hand, the person has known me a pretty long time, and knows me quite well. On the other, if they are putting me on a short list with Gandhi, maybe not so much.
Regardless, I was incredibly moved and honored by their words, and was very much regretting not knowing who it was who wrote it. But as I thought about it more, I realized that in a way, to dwell on that, or the writer's kind words, in the spirit of Gandhi, perhaps it best not to dwell on either the author or the sentiment but to merely accept the thought with gratitude and move on.
As Gandhi said:
"The first condition of humaneness is a little humility and a little diffidence about the correctness of one's conduct and a little receptiveness."
It was me, I said it!
ReplyDeleteOkay okay, not really. But it could have been. You are indeed one of the people I most admire.