Life

Sitting on the white sandy beach of Kaanapali in Maui, Hawaii a young boy approached me begging for a dollar. Seeing that he really needed and wanted the money, I gave him without any thought. I actually gave the boy two dollars more than he asked. The boy looked at me and said, “Why did you give me more than I asked,” a question I was not prepared to answer. I told him to enjoy it because live is short. The boy looked me in the face and said to me, “Sir, what is life?” Very amazed by his question, I told him I didn’t really know. The boy smiled with me and ran off to play with his friends. But what is Life? Life is the greatest unknown; it is a mysterious, unpredictable cascade of unbelievably amazing, unpremeditated experiences. Life is a true abyss, the truth may be right before your eyes or yet the truth may be so far from your eyes that trusting your eyes may be of dyer consequence. Knowing the difference between the two adds another element of difficulty not many can sincerely claim to have dealt with victoriously.

Life is never what one would wish, as life feels no guilt, contorting ones hopes, aspirations and dreams to produce a never ending array of experiences. Life is never subject to control; rather it has a sense of irony, sometimes indescribably so. Life is a teacher, an understatement that can be dismissed by no one. I myself have been time and time again a pawn in the game of life. Life has taken away so much from many of us, but for good reasons, so as to allow us to realize that we were blessed to have had so much to lose. Life has though offered us much more than we will ever know. But the greatest lesson life has taught us may be confined here in these words. We are all unique, all of our lives are unparalleled, and we are a mirror image of no one. People find it amazing how quickly children can develop into teenagers and how seemingly regressed they are at the age of adulthood. Many of us have had various good and bad experiences in life and have had to make many choices that life has thrown at us, but I believe it is these decisions and choices that we make in life that make us who we are. I have witnessed much and recognized that problems are just as good as no problems because we can change them. Many of us fail to realize that the reasons we have problems in life is because of the way we live life with each other. We don’t realize that we do evil, atrocious things to people that do good, caring things to us. Another main reason why we fall into problems is because of the many lies and deceitful, hurtful things we utter to each other. It is true we live in a very sinful world today, but it is no excuse for the way we treat people in our lives, and people we have come to know in life. It is also true that to tell the truth is hard in life because we usually suffer or inflict pain on others, so why do we do it? We tell lies, because lies are easier to tell than the truth. But is this what we really want? Especially when we consider the many other sins and lies that we will have to answer come our day of judgment by a power that knows our whole past. I am not a holy person or saint; in fact, I am a sinner, just like many other humans, but what I have come to realize in life is that it is not the amount of sin you commit or the wrong things you do. What really matters is what you do to correct your wrongdoings. It is what you do to try and make a wrong right. It is what you do to try and change. Change is the keyword to our success in life. Whether we choose to change or remain, who we are in life is left up to us. Many people are from various ethnic cultures and background, whether African American, Hispanic, Chinese etc., but no matter what your ethnicity we all can change if we try, and we all have the power to do so. We are all people searching for something or someone in life.

One of the most painstaking acts in life is knowing when we do wrong things to ourselves, or to others, and trying to hide it from ourselves; pretending like it did not happen, telling ourselves we did nothing wrong or trying to convince our mind it was not us. Despite the length of time or the effort put forth the truth can’t be denied, it did happen, and no matter how hard you try to forget it, it won’t go away because we all have three spiritual elements inside all of us, The Heart, The Soul and The Mind. These three guardians never deprive us of the truth or the feelings we have inside. Many of us try to hide who we are because of shame or dislike of our very ways of life. We are only fools in our own minds, because what we fail to realize is this is impossible, because the more you try to hide who you are and what you do in life, the more you actually show the type of person you are. No matter what you do in life, whether good or bad you are shaping how others see you. Ironic isn’t it! It is like that popular clichй, “Actions speak louder than words?” If you are