Lessons Are in the Living

One day, I will wake up. When I do, I will regain my bearings; I will blink a few times to get reacclimated to the present light; I will look around and see the machines and monitors; there will be people observing and taking notes; and I will quickly calm down from the split second of the startled state of awakening. And on that day of waking, I will be asked by the main note taker, “So, how did you like that life?”

After a few moments of reflection - because, now, the living of life has shifted over into the realm of remembering life - I will simply say with a smile that it was good. And I will continue to smile at the remembering of the good people and the good moments. And, they will not need to be called forth. They will just come back to me like vignettes of various lengths. And the remembering of the good will not take more than a few seconds.

Then, the Note Taker will ask, “How can you call it good when there were so many instances when this life was not good?” And, her head will nod at the bookshelves. Her head will turn and look at the other bookshelves that surround the room - which surround us and all that care to observe and listen and take note - that go from floor to ceiling, and are filled with black, three-ring binders. On the spines of each, there are dates and titles. “1996 - St. Croix,” “1987 - High School Graduation,” “2003 - Marriage,” “2016 - Back to Normal.” In scanning the dates, I see that everything is sequential. For confirmation, I see the first notebook in the first position on the first bookshelf: “1970 - Birth.”

I will tell the Note Taker that she is right. There was a lot of pain in this life. My eyes will look at the binder titled “1974 - Pneumonia,” for that is the first instance of real suffering I remember. “I was crying a lot. The event is spotty, though. I think that I was in and out of consciousness. I do recall the figures of my parents rushing back and forth from the bathroom to the den where I was lying, sweating, pained.They were carrying washcloths in their hands. They put the cold towels on my forehead and under my armpits. The cold turned to hot almost instantly. The hot ones were removed. The cold ones were lain. And that went on and on and on until I lost consciousness again. I woke up in the hospital, weak, but not as hot. My mother and father were crying and smiling. They looked exhausted and relieved.”

“That is exactly my point. How could you call that good for anyone that was involved? Especially you as a child?”

“Because, Madame, that was when I began to understand the concept of care. No human being would go through so much to make sure that another human being is safe unless there is care. There are no sleepless nights, there are no emergency phone calls to family members, or to doctors, if there is not care. I’d like to think that it was care - or maybe a better word is concern - that helped me to recover. I’m sure that you have all of this documented.”

After her eyebrows relaxed and her note taking stopped, she said, “We do. I prefer to ask questions directly of you about the lived experience. And, I find it, well, odd that you found good in that painful episode.”

“It wasn’t an episode. It was a life. A life that I lived.”

Without looking up from the new notes that she jotted down, she said, ”Whatever.”

“Ah! You are the clinical and cynical note taker.” At this, she peered at me over her glasses, then went back to writing. “I will give you something else to write about to prove my point. The binder titled ‘2001 - College Graduation’ should have the subtitle, ‘Accomplishment’. That was the year that I finally finished something.”

“Wait. You were thirty one at that time. You had to have finished things before then.”

“Sure I did. But, those were small things. In finishing college, I finally proved that I was smart. I knew it, but I had nothing on paper. Nothing that could be put onto a resumé. If you look at the binder from 1987 that is titled ‘High School Graduation’, you will notice something missing. There is no diploma. I went through the motions of graduating, but I didn’t actually do it. I was one class short, and it was my fault. I owned up to that. I passed the GED exam a few months later, and I didn’t even study for it.”

“But, you were really smart. In that 1971 binder there is proof. You began reading then. What happened?”

“My father made me repeat the second grade, even though I had perfect grades. He didn’t think that I was mature enough for the third grade. From that point on, I stopped trying, stopped proving myself, stopped doing my best.”

“So, where is the good in that?”

“You have to let me finish. I’m getting to it”

“Well, please finish.”

She watched me roll my eyes, and sit up straighter in my bed before continuing. “I went to small colleges off and on and got some good grades, but they were mostly bad. It wasn’t until 1995 when things changed. That is when I decided to be a teacher. The grades I earned were high again in the classes I took after that decision.”

“What changed?”

“Maybe it was the fact that my human brain was finally fully developed. Maybe it was the goal of being a teacher. I don’t know. But, I do know that I felt very proud of myself in 2001. That sense of accomplishment is quite unique. I suppose it comes from setting a goal, doing a lot of hard work, not giving up, and enjoying the process while achieving what was just a fledgling thought years prior.”

She stopped writing. She looked at me, and then around the room at the binders that contained this life. She seemed to be getting it. “I have read about so many of the events of your life. Some of them I cringed at.”

“When it became uncomfortable to read, did you stop?”

She nodded and said, “I got tired of reading about so many hardships and being sad for you that I would close whichever binder I was reading, and put it back onto the shelf. I would cry for you, grab another binder at random, and hope to read something happy. But, I never saw any.”

Her eyes were welling up. “When it is time for you to live your life,” I explained, “It will be a good one. You already understand compassion. In all of the lives that I have lived, they became better when compassion became the center of that life. That was the case in this one.”

The tears didn’t fall, and she had stopped taking notes. She just listened.

“You didn’t see the good in this life because you stopped reading. You just read about the events, and many were rough. But, you didn’t take note of the lessons from those events, my dear Note Taker. When I woke up, I said that this life was a good one. That is because of the lessons learned in the living of this life. And, I hope that I never forget this, no matter how many lives I live. Otherwise, this job of being a spirit would be meaningless. There would be no reason to inhabit human beings, if we did not learn from these lives.”

When I stopped speaking, I saw that the junior note takers were no longer writing. Their clipboards were at their sides while they were watching, listening, and absorbing. To be honest, this is the part I really like about my job; the debriefing after a life. I always hope to impart something that will aid the journeys of those that move forward in the training.

“When I moved through the ranks of Chronicler, to Junior Note Taker, to Senior Note Taker, to a Liver of Lives, I was nervous with each promotion,” I continued. “I realized that each step was really important. And, now that I am living lives, I understand that nothing is as precious as life. The human bodies are merely vehicles. We, the spirits in those bodies, are supposed to get better, wiser, stronger with each life. All of us learn, and all of us help. And, we improve each other with each, successive life.”

Even though each of these young ones thanked me for my words, I was filled with gratitude and honor. They found this process to be important, and they understood it better because of me. So, I thanked them all for their hard work, and relaxed before my next life would begin. My chronicler was sliding the last binder into the last space into the last bookshelf, and said to no one in particular, “Yep. That was a good life.”