Blog 60 – 6.29.15

At the recommendation of a lovely young girl, my granddaughter, I went to see the new  Pixar/Disney movie Inside Out weekend before last. I have for a long time loved the comedy rants of Louis Black and he does the voice of Anger. He did a terrific job by the way. We all know Anger. Joy was well portrayed also and we have gratefully all known Joy. Fear and Disgust were also well represented in The Control Room, the mind of a precious little girl that could be and is all of us. But the emotion that touched me most was Sadness.

I see myself as a positive upbeat person, a joyful person. I often have made the mistake of not allowing others to work through their own sadness by trying too hard to pull them out of their funk and not even taking the time to listen and learn why they are so sad. The little character who portrayed Sadness in the movie reminded me so much of my Emily, my beloved daughter. She passed from this stage almost three years ago. Beginning today and all of July I will be marking the month of her birth and her death with passages from a book I wrote about her called, Emily – The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Along.

Emily was basically a cheerful person, so bright and with such a great sense of humor but like all of us she was touched by sadness. Her parents separated and divorced when she was seven. Though a lovely little girl she asked her Mom as a teenager why she was not pretty like so many of the other girls. She could sing so wonderfully but the first song she impressed her classmates in her second Middle School with was the Funny Girl/Fanny Brice/Barbra Streisand hit Second Hand Rose. The kids who hardly knew her were so amazed at such a big voice coming out of a little girl that they called her Rose throughout their acquaintance with her. My Emily touched a lot of lives and brought joy to all of us who knew her but as I said she was touched by sadness.

My dear departed mother, the first great love of my life, was touched by sadness. She did not find a lot in her life to smile about but I remember her gorgeous smile like a bright sun after a storm clears out. She called me Sunshine and heaven knows I tried to be that for her. But I have come to believe it is impossible to make someone else happy. There is only one person we can make happy and that is ourself. Then and only then do we have happiness to share. We can share our happiness with others if they are willing. We can also share our own and their sadness. My sad little Mommy took her own life three years after my daddy died. I was almost fifty but the little boy whose greatest fear as a child was that his mama would die realized that fear. I have lost both my parents, my first child, and countless friends and family members so my life too has been touched by sadness.

Of Jesus it is written that he was acquainted with sorrows, in all points tempted such as we. There is within each one of us a natural buoyancy (like that big word, me neither, I should have said ability to float) that causes us to rise to the top if we just allow it time to do its job. But if we hold too tightly to the cares, troubles, and tragedies of life they will drag us down deep under the water and drown our spirits with despair and depression. My sweet Mommy and many people you know perhaps even you have fought long and hard with chronic depression, sadness. Some judge my mother a coward and say she took the easy way out. I choose to see it differently. She had had enough and hit the reset button. I no longer believe the heaven and hell scenario that many Christians believe. I think we make this dream we call life a heaven or hell by the thoughts and words we choose to dwell on. But we will awake from this dream or we can choose to shorten it, or dream another.

Point is we are all touched at times by sadness but it also is a gift. Jesus could never have known the tender compassion it takes to cry with friends at a funeral had he not been touched by sadness. Just remember, my friends, that the secret to rising to the top is always the same just let go and the Divine within will float you to the top.

Your fellow traveler who is not a great swimmer but who is an excellent floater,
David White