...so close by to you.

The feeling of triumph.  Over your own self awakening, over helping another understand something or maybe over a major victory that would forever change the lives of everyone you have ever met....

...everyone you have ever met.  Names and faces.  Hundreds of thousands.  Maybe even millions.  All over and everywhere, but all in one small, distant, quiet little corner of our small, over-looked part of a galaxy.  A galaxy that I have to believe has been seen by some others, somewhen in time.  

Everyone you've ever known is so close by to you.  Everyday you learn the names of people you might need to get information from.  But that's all.  You look at that person, ask your questions, get your info and move onto your goal, leaving a face and a name on the backburner of your mind to forget in a day or two.  But you watch the news and see people, all so nearby, so close by to you, take their own lives, take someone else's life, someone else takes their life, they save a life, someone saved their life, someone saved your soul, or someone broke it...

These people are within your reach daily, constantly, within your sight and within your voice.  We pretend it's not our responsibility, the misfortune that happens to others.  But if not our own, than who's?  If we learned how to look at another persons face as someone we now know, someone who actually exists in our own time and space, why not look at them without a goal?  Learn to look at them as a person with infinie what if's and possibilities?  When you walk into a store, don't just default to a "how are you?" and "I'm fine." Actually listen.  Do it in genuinity.  

But these people, all around us, so close by to you have a story.  They suffer, too. Just as much as you do or did or possibly could be.  And to create some kindness out of your heart and to put aside the fear of awkwardness or what others may think of you, wouldn't you think that it might hold some potential to save a life?  Maybe even your own?

And it comes full circle.  To take a moment to acknowledge a strangers existence.  Smile.  Break the fear that a smile is associated with bad intentions.  And remember the faces you meet.  You'll find that the feeling of a major victory that would forever change the lives of everyone you have ever met, would also change your own.

Everyone you have ever known is so close by to you...

What's beyond everyone you have ever known?  What's beyond this little planet? A place we cannot call home.  This place, these people, every birth and every death has happened here, so close by to you.  How have they touched your life? How have you touched theirs?  And how will this home be better when you leave?

Death

Why is it that almost everyone I've ever met refuses to ever contemplate the concept of death, the nature of death and what it means to be around someone who is dying or themselves dying?  Why are they so adamant about not thinking about it simply because they don't need to right now.  You'll have to someday.  Isn't there such a thing as being prepared for the inevitable?  Your parents will die, you siblings could die before you and yes, you too will eventually pass away.  Wouldn't you want to be prepare for the heartache that lies in wait?  I think this is one of those fearing fear itself things.

I think about death everyday.  Not in a sadistic kind of way.  But in a realistic, open minded way.  Every time I go out on a bike or drive in my car, the possibility of being hit is there.  It's real.  So whenever I speak of this to someone as a realistic fact, they look at me like I'm some morbid being and tell me "No, that's not going to happen."
Why not?  Who are you to say if I do or do not get into an statistically factual accident?  Why can't you accept the truth that, yes I may drive as safely as I can, but not everyone does.  I see idiots watching their crotches as they're flying 70 down the freeway.  Semi-trucks passing me on the right as I'm in the turn lane on my bike, staring at their crotches too.  It's maddening how careless people are.  How invincible they feel.  And then the day comes when you say "No, that's not going to happen" and it does, how do you think you're going to feel about reality then?
Death happens.  It's natural and a lot of the time really really stupid as to WHY it happens.  Sometimes you don't even get an answer, you just have to spend a TON of time accepting that it happened and try to reclaim your life.  But what is the point of ignoring something that happens everyday to so many around you?  What's so wrong with preparing the mind for trauma?  There is nothing wrong with exercising reality.