Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Missing

Recently, a friend passed away. We all know we'll be missing him, but then, we lose so many important people from our lives whom we miss even years after.

This made me reflect on all the people I was missing: those who I had witnessed alive and then they were gone. Most were family, then friends, acquaintances, and then others: others with a public persona I have never met or met once or twice only through coincidence. Let me throw some names: Dr. Leo Felice Buscaglia, John Denver, Mother Theresa, Jacques Cousteau, Joseph Campbell and a few others like them. There are many other names of course, but right now these names popped up to the forefront of my mind.

These people I'm missing because they brought out the best in me, in us, without knowing us. Yet, they knew of the eternal scheme of things, and although each one was small, one person in billions, they were unique and irreplaceable. They, each in his own way, tried to persuade us toward peace, toward understanding, and toward meaningful communication, but they weren't all that successful, not through their shortcomings but through the shortcomings of the human race, since human race, to be taught well, needs to be tamed first.

These people haven't only existed, but they have truly lived because they rose above the borders of their existence and personal concerns to the concerns of all humanity. Although they had different vocations, one very important aspect united them: they were all "people oriented."

To them things were for usage; they were secondary. As Walt Whitman said: "In the faces of men and women I see God," I think, the kind of people I miss without knowing them personally have seen the Creator while they lived.