Lessons from the Inside of a Broken Mirror

Lessons from the Inside of a Broken Mirror – 1

Obituary

“Now, start writing. You’ve got twenty minutes.” The instructions were clear: write your own obituary. Write it as someone else, remembering you, the way that you want to be remembered. It felt dirty, morbid, as if we had been asked to dig our own grave. Most of us just sat there, looking around in shock. The shock-and-awe factor is probably what they were counting on. The threat of death was not real… well, at least not now, not in this classroom anyway. I closed my eyes, turned inward, did some quick breath work and a short visualization practice. How do I want to be remembered when I’m gone? I started by doubling my age, if I were to die in thirty years… my dreams achieved, my life in order, my family and friends proud to know me. Then I started writing. I almost didn’t even realize that I’d started at first. The words just flowed. I wrote two neat paragraphs from the witness’s perspective, set thirty years in the future. I read over and few times and made my corrections. I looked around the room to see that most people were still writing, so I took that opportunity to contemplate and compare what that obituary would be like if I were to die today. I noted several changes that I needed to make, assuming that I make it the sixty, and jotted them down on the inside of the back cover of my notebook. Some of these I could change today, the longest, toughest changes, might take a couple of years at most, the sooner the better…

“That’s time! Pens down! Turn in what you have.” There were moans all around the room. I wondered why. I felt good about mine. I felt like I’d found something. “We’ll discuss them later. Have a nice lunch.” I handed my obituary in and walked out the door. The handful of items that I’d jotted down in my notebook hadn’t gone unnoticed, nothing did here, but that wasn’t important right now. What was important was that I push forward on the changes.

I challenge you to do the same.

- I have lived a quite a lot of life for my relative short amount of time on this planet. I’ve physically been around the world, visiting more than twenty countries, twice, from coast to coast more times than I can count, and I’ve literarily been around the world more times than are possible in a single lifetime. I have the equivalent of four college degrees. I’ve been in and out of combat zones four different continents; helped governments and rebellions. I’ve saved lives and I’ve taken a few (all in self-defense; none on US soil). One of the most profound things I saw, during my travels, was the power of meditation. I knew that I had to learn as much about it as possible. I spent years learning and sitting in silence, with much peace, before I finally found a teacher that led me to my first witness experience. My experience with my witness was like looking at my life from the other side of a broken mirror. I wept. These are the lessons I’ve learned, the hard way, while reflecting (literally) on my life, through that broken mirror. I humbly pray that, through these reflections, I might be a blessing to someone else.