The Legacy of Love
Often, through the onset of old age, through loss or mistakes, an inner purpose emerges as the vision of oneself collapses. For me, this has become an opening to look at what is important in life.
For many, the emails in their inbox begging a response, the number of Facebook friends or LinkedIn Contacts has become the substance of their life story. Veiled in activity, hours of labour are invested in keeping up with virtual networks. Never will the satiation point be reached which fulfills the hunger for face-to-face contact. Dr. Gordon Neufeld often comments on giving up defining ourselves to ourselves or to others by making lists of what we do. We are limiting ourselves too, by letting others define us by what we do. Neufeld tells us it is not what we do but who we are that really counts. In other words, “being” trumps “doing”. Coming to a place of rest from stimulation or “doingness” will give us an opportunity to gain access to our inner space and will help to uncover the “beingingness” in all of us. Being is the background of life, while existence is the foreground.
When you make loving others the story of your life, there is never a final chapter. When the past bleeds into the present, the present can provide both form for the future and understanding of the past. Just like faces are passed down from one generation to another, the capacity to forgive, to give compassion and acceptance for the mistakes of those who have gone before us can give new form to the present. After the 9/11 tragedy, a street person commented, “all we need to do is live with an open heart and this would change everything”.
The real question is what is important. In our culture, staying busy is easy. Leaving a legacy of love for the next generation to grow in, is difficult. Feeling a deep sense of sameness, usefulness, importance and belongingness is not possible in the virtual world. Love becomes an exercise in trying to catch a moon-beam.
The only place to find meaning is in your reflection in the eyes of another. When you are present, when your attention is fully in the now, when you invite another to exist in your presence with delight, warmth and excitement, you are making a difference. Your presence can foster a sense of sameness, belongingness and importance for others or can create pain, questions and fear.
Allan Doyle in his book, “Where I Belong” shares with his readers, that when he was sitting at his family’s dinner table, he never once felt a need to be entertained nor did he need to entertain others. For him, this experience was interpreted as being “at home”. Feeling “at home” in the closeness and complexity of relationships is the essence of life and is essentially the definition of “beingness”.
After a month in Newfoundland, close to the sea, the wind, the music, the stories of adversity, the simplicity and the “beingness” of the people here, I am reminded how busyness can get in the way of cultivating a rich fullness of life.
In the final chapter, the only thing that matters is whether we have loved and have been loved.
Copyright, Susan Dafoe-Abbey, 2014. This article in its original English or in translation may be used for educational purposes. susan@dafoe-abbey.com www.dafoe-abbey.com 519 829 2232
