Epitaph

Life is an incredible journey! With each passing year we learn more about ourselves, about others, about everything!

When we celebrate a special date, like our birthday, we realize how little gratitude we have for the life that God has given us. How much joy, how much laughter, how many achievements, how many experiences... life is obviously not made up only of good moments. Not so pleasant situations also appear along the way, but they also teach us that no matter how intense and incredible it may be, life is also fragile, and it fades away like the passing wind, like the falling leaves... perhaps that is what makes it so special, a mix of beauty, strength and fragility. At the same time that we are everything, we are also nothing... totally dependent on God and His Divine Providence and at the same time totally free to choose the path we want (and obviously assume the consequences of those choices).

The funny thing is that, as the years go by, we conclude that we know almost nothing, how many things to learn, to know, to live, to experience… how many mountains to climb and descend, how many roads to follow, how many paths, how many landscapes… how much time do we still have to live all this? We don’t know, it’s not up to us to know… It’s God who knows… but I once learned from a great priest, who today certainly lives in the shadow of the Almighty, that what matters is not the time lived, but the quality of the time lived… great Father Léo…

This reflection leads us to think: what is the quality of the time we live? Will our “epitaph” be like the song by Titãs when the “stage curtains close”, “the gloves are hung up”, and the sun finally goes out? Will it be more like loving, crying more, taking more risks, accepting people as they are? Maybe less complicated, working less, caring less about problems?

There are many things I regret not having experienced (good things), many moments when I should have put my cell phone aside for a while, turned off the television, maybe I would have had more time to be with the people I love, played more with my children, paid more attention to those who cross my path... I wish I had had time to read more, to smile more, not to worry so much about the balance of my bank account (not that this isn't important... but sometimes the desire for power, for possessions, for success... these things are tiring... they hurt, they distance us from each other... and from God...).

But there is still time! How many years, months, weeks, days, hours, seconds do I have left? I don’t know, but I am left with the great lesson of that priest who once said that what matters is not the time lived, but the quality of the time that is lived. How do I want to spend the rest of the time that I have left? I want to enjoy the little things that make me smile, I want to be able to see the sun rise and set more often, I want to forgive more, because at the end of it all, what is the point of creating obstacles and walls when we can build bridges? I want to love more, love for real, concretely and not just in a subjective and poetic way. In the end, we will all be dust and will be very comfortable in that little hole of less than two square meters… and you can be sure that there is not much room in there, just a “crappy” wooden coffin and some not very nice flowers, a piece of clothing that covers us and that’s it… and the rest? It will stay here… possessions, money, wounds, achievements, power, etc… all of that will belong to someone else… and what does it matter then? How I will be remembered! That's what matters! What good things I did, how much I smiled, how much I loved, how much I enjoyed my children, parents, grandchildren, friends, how much I taught with my life, how much I learned from the lives of others... Don't wait until life starts to show signs of saying goodbye!

Have you ever stopped to think about what memory will exist about you in a hundred years? Maybe no one will remember that you ever existed… but so what!? What matters is that, if we live the life we are given with quality, we will touch people today, they will remember us as someone who was worth knowing and living with and perhaps our life gave meaning to the lives of others. That is what matters.

The saints are those who understood the meaning of the word love, they loved to the very end! Such a simple and yet challenging choice, because loving requires leaving oneself behind, leaving differences aside, loving the other despite their leprosy…

Perhaps this way, in our “epitaph” we will be able to say that we loved to the limit of our strength, that we cried until our tears dried, that we got tired of watching the sun rise, that we took extreme risks, that we made many mistakes (but we also learned from our mistakes), that we made an effort to accept people as they are and treat them with the dignity they deserve, regardless of their choices or values, that we did not care so much about superfluous things, that we worked as much as was fair and provided a dignified life for ourselves and our loved ones, without excesses and finally, that we died from loving so much and thus, we will live eternally surrounded by the Love that moved us to love on this earth.