What life-altering things should every human ideally get to experience at least once in their lives? It's not ideal, but natural reality: our society puts up barriers between us and the life-altering things we are meant to experience. I wrote the following when my son Joseph was born in August, 2016. A perfectly healthy baby boy, he died suddenly (SIDS) six weeks later.
To appreciate my own place in the long stream of humanity, I go back to the WWII generation that contributed so much to the civilization we enjoy today. As a child, I witnessed the steadfast, purposeful striving of that generation to answer a call not of their choosing, but one others had placed before them. The sacrifices they made liberated the entire planet from oppression and opened the lives of many peoples to freedoms and opportunities they had not even envisioned, much less experienced. That was my life-altering experience and it motivated me to try to make some contribution that would be part of the greater good. FJM
To appreciate my own place in the long stream of humanity, I go back to the WWII generation that contributed so much to the civilization we enjoy today. As a child, I witnessed the steadfast, purposeful striving of that generation to answer a call not of their choosing, but one others had placed before them. The sacrifices they made liberated the entire planet from oppression and opened the lives of many peoples to freedoms and opportunities they had not even envisioned, much less experienced. That was my life-altering experience and it motivated me to try to make some contribution that would be part of the greater good. FJM
I am sorry for your loss to you and your family. This is heartbreaking. To be able to direct grief into good is not simple nor easy.
Memento Mori