Our perspective is more important than our experiences
The things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Our sufferings will diminish in importance when compared to the glory that awaits us. …
~~Caroline Espejon, Perspective
Our youngest called this afternoon saying she had lost her iphone 4S.
On arriving at the school and going upstairs where she was completing her homework, I greeted her then looked in her backpack–thinking I might uncover what she had overlooked–only to see an empty iphone case.
“You didn’t lose this. Someone stole it,” I stated.
“That’s what I said,” chimed a fellow student sitting across the table where my daughter had been working with other students after school.
I don’t’ know what hurt our daughter more–her initial belief that she had lost her phone, or her fellow student and my conclusion that someone had stolen it.
Later and downstairs speaking with an administrator of the school I learned that parents of 12 students had dis-enrolled their children from the school our daughter attends, American Indian Public Charter School. Ranked 1st in California public schools and 71st in the nation, we are all bewildered by efforts of our local unified school district to close the school.
[To read more of my views on this issue visit: saveamericanindian.wordpress.com
Last Thursday during the recent meeting of elected school board, members voted 4 to 2 to enact a “Notice of Violation,” thereby giving American Indian Charter Schools to 60 to re-organize its administration, with great emphasis on changing its fiscal policies and bylaws.
Parents who removed their twelve students enrolled them in a school located around the corner and in the next block.
Explaining this matter takes a long time.
Suffice it to say, my daughter’s day was sad and I as her mother felt impotent to change matters.
As always I comforted her with reminders that theft happens quite often. “Bad things happen to good people all the time,” I responded to her continued questioning of, “Why did this have to happen to me? I’ve always tried to be a good person.”
Some adults might find our daughter’s questions and statements trite, naive and simple.
But children, even early teenagers see the world without the complexities that in an effort to deny and assuage our pain we, adults, construct and embrace.
When an injurious incident occurs they, if allowed and encouraged to speak honestly, share their essential truth.
Our daughter felt violated.
The individual who unzipped the pouch of her backpack and removed her iphone trespassed onto her property.
The loss of the cell phone extended into her person same as when someone steals our car or breaks into our home.
And yet this loss concerned an object … a thing that lack life.
Our daughter’s cell phone was and will never be a sentient being bearing purpose beyond what it can do for the person possessing it.
During the drive home as our daughter lay slumped in the passenger’s seat beside I spoke of karma.
“Why should we be good people, do what’s right, if something like this is going to happen?” our daughter asked.
“Because I believe things even out in the end,” I said.
And yet even I struggle with this statement.
“What we do in this life,” I continued, ” … the acts we commit now affect our future. Not just in this life, but in future lives.” I fervently believe this.
“The hurtful things we do to others in this life have a bearing on what occurs to us in future lifetimes. At worse they can hurt our children.”
I then said, “Can you imagine that the person who stole your iphone might in a future lifetime experience someone stealing their child from them?”
Our daughter grew evermore silent.
Perhaps I was reaching. But the pain that our daughter felt was palpable. So was the disgust and anguish her teacher demonstrated and expressed when we discussed the matter.
“This is the second incident of a student’s phone having been stolen,” he said, adding, “I searched the backpacks of two students and did not find the phone among their contents.” One student,” he explained had sit in our daughter’s sit for but a moment.
I can only imagine what those students must have felt having their backpacks searched. A sense of humiliation and embarrassment washed over me.
Considering all those effected, perhaps my example of karma was not so far-fetched.
Karma, I believe, has less to do with the objects or acts in question, but rather the feelings engendered, emotions stirred, pain inflicted by the act committed.
And then I reached home.
Returning to my computer I resumed checking my e-mails.
On moving through one set of e-mails I notice a reply from an internet marketer and social media expert I had contacted two days ago.
The marketer/social media expert had sent me an invitation to an online seminar describing her work.
Having visited her website I e-mailed asking to speak with her engaging her services.
Having yet this morning to receive a reply I wondered, what had my e-mail gone through.
Realizing I had, after e-mailing her, received no warning that my message had not gone through, I began to wonder about the marketer. I had liked what I read on her website.
Was it all a front–the website?
I then descended into … what did I do wrong? I had invited the marketer/social media expert to visit my website prior to replying to my request to speak.
This would save time and allow her to see where I am in the way of promoting and marketing my work.
On opening her e-mail I read her apology for not having contacted me.
“Yesterday was not a good day for me,” she began. “We buried my sister and I have had to take some quiet time to settle.”
My heart slowed.
While speaking to our daughter’s teacher I shared that nearly 2o years ago I was shot four times by a man who went on what is now quite common, a random shooting spree. I received two bullets in my wrist, two in my neck. Of the latter one tore through my parathyroid, the other remained lodged in my neck for six weeks until a surgeon removed it.
“I’m not even supposed to be here. And certainly not walking around and doing all the things I do.”
Our daughter’s teacher smiled and lowered his head.
“It’s only a phone,” said. “It can be replaced.”
My prayers are with the social media expert and her family during this time of loss.
May we all find ways to keep perspective on this life that is filled with enormous tumults and tremors that try our hearts, minds and souls.