Today I had a visit from the past. I'm talking about quite the distant past, back in 1954. I was 12 years old, and going to school in Switzerland.
In my first year in that school, I got unaccountably sick. I would have intense fevers that lasted a day, and then they would go away. I lost weight. The incompetent doctor in Gstaad, the town where the school spent the winter, thought that I was anemic. I didn't know it, but I was dying.
During this time, like the weak member of the herd that I was, I was preyed upon by stronger members of the herd. One of them was especially galling. I won't mention his name, but I feared encountering him in the hallways. He would always try to hit me in the stomach, and my fear of him grew palpable as days passed, and I grew unaccountably weaker from the disease that was consuming me, and that had by that time reduced my body weight by 25%.
I recovered from that sickness, which turned out to be undulant fever, a disease brought about by drinking milk from a cow that carried that disease. It was not an easy recovery, but thanks to my mother, who flew to Switzerland to make sure that I survived, I made it through. But I never forgot my tormentor of that time. For years, I harbored resentment towards this person who picked on me in my moment of weakness.
Yesterday, out of curiosity, I looked up his bio. When I saw his picture, the memories came back of the pain that I had suffered at his hands. I looked at his face, the face of a person who had gone on to graduate from an Ivy League school and even join the same secret society that George W. Bush had been in. The face was the same, albeit a bit older; there was no mistaking it. My feelings, mixed as I saw the picture, changed as I looked lower down in his bio.
He was killed in Vietnam in 1968, a 2nd lieutenant. looking at his face, I felt so much sadness, so many mixed feelings, and I willed myself to forgive this person. Finally, after all these years, I had to let go of my pain in my resentment, and finally bless him.
It seems that this is just one small manifestation of a very powerful year, this 2012. So many things are coming together, so many things are coming to a head, so much consciousness is being forced upon us, that we are obligated to change. We cannot stand still, and those of us who were committed to goodness, to openness of heart, and to expanding our consciousness and the consciousness of everyone around us are being called, as my friend was called, yes, I call him my friend now, we are called to serve. We are called to serve all of humanity, to do our best to be a shining example of the best of the human spirit has to offer. I feel that there is nothing more important at this moment than to truly serve everything that exists by letting our goodness, all the love that we have in our heart, manifest and shine. I pray that I may be led by the light, and that I may inspire everyone I know. Yes, even now, 70 years after my birth, I am still an idealist, and I will be until the day I Leave this body, and hopefully even beyond that.
That year, 1968, I was 2 years out of the Army, in which I had enlisted in 1966, and that was my 2nd year of studying with Ali Akbar Khan, one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, and who would be my teacher for 12 years.
Now, so many years later, having just turned 70, I think of that wonderful poem by Robert Frost, “The road not taken”
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I hope that you all are having the most wonderful day.
Fondly,
Shri 108 Maharaj AKA Mr Horrible
Oh my Goddesss.... twice in the community spotlight in one day? My diary "French Postcards: was up here earlier... thank you, nameless benefactors; first time ever in years of posting what i thought were so much better diaries! well, we shall see...