Encouragement

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Life is a complex and comprehensive package of good times and sad ones. A journey we undertake from birth as we travel through different seasons. The basic rule lies in making this travel a memorable and eventful one. We may either go through guarded moments or unguarded moments in life. Sometimes the path is a smooth ride whereas at times it can be a roller coaster one.

I am reminded of a very beautiful and touching story, in fact a short movie which I had watched several years ago. There was a young lady who was terminally ill, traveling alone by train to a distant location in order to be admitted into a home specially meant for dying patients. Somehow her own family members had abandoned her, they had no time for her in her final days, each one busy in their own schedules.

During the course of her journey, there was a sudden knock on the door and a man rushes in to the carriage which she had occupied. He frantically tells this lady that the cops were after him and he was on the run. But in reality he was an innocent man as his friend and partner had played fraud and falsely implicated him in an embezzlement case. He pleads with the lady to let him hide in the wash room and to refrain from disclosing to the cops about his whereabouts in case they came hunting for him there. The lady relents. Soon, the cops knock on her door but she denies having seen the man, so they leave.

The man comes out and travels along with this lady on her journey. She recounts her own sad story to him. At some point during their conversation, this man falls in love with the lady. They reach their destination. The woman continues on her journey to the hospital. The man thanks her at the station for her immense help and walks away.

The very next day this woman now spending her last days at the hospital walks out into the balcony of her hospital room. To her amazement, she sees this same man sitting down at the bench in the garden facing her room. He looks at her silently without wavering his gaze. She is stunned beyond words and rushes back into her room. She silently peeps from behind the curtain but the man continues his vigil. This goes on for days. The woman ventures out now and then into the balcony; their eyes lock and a silent conversation goes on between them. This man however never attempts to go up to the lady’s room to meet her. The woman understands the reason. Though, not a word is said, the meaning is extremely clear.

All the others in the hospital observe the same occurrence. The day before the lady passes away, the nurse comes into her room at night and starts discussing with her about this man and how she and the other nurses have been speculating and marveling at his silent love. The woman calmly replies that she now had no regrets about dying because in the final moments of her life someone had loved and wanted her. That was enough for her. He had given meaning to her last days, made it colorful and happy, thus lessening her own pain. He had evoked love in her own heart. This was all that mattered. The next day the lady passes away and the man quietly leaves the hospital premises on being told the news.

In life, we too love tremendously in different ways and even at times in strange ways. In the end this is all that matters that we loved without expecting anything. Or, we were greatly loved in return.
We allowed our hearts to have its share of experiencing this awesome emotion which has its own moments of joy and pain.

Sometimes destiny casts certain trials in life. The storm comes unexpectedly. But somehow even after the storm has passed, we cannot muster up enough courage to repair the damage done. We stand transfixed to the spot staring at the devastation caused. We cannot be entirely blamed for it because on our part we are hesitant at triggering another storm in the course of repair and re-work.

The result is that we withdraw into our shell, afraid to reach out for fear of being rejected again. We love silently in our hearts with the same intensity and fervor and know that we shall do so until our last breath. We love deeply from afar, we are very much there in the background. Perhaps this is an exceptional type of love. To love in spite of all.
This is the way Christ loved us even after He was rejected by His own. We read in John 15: 18-19, “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.”

Today let us look at life in a new perspective and make sure that we have encountered love, irrespective of whether we won or lost. Love will always be the backbone of life without which our journey remains incomplete. It will make every day meaningful to know that this great emotion did cross our hearts to dwell there forever.

Maria Franco
 

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