A Heart on Hold

My daughter’s partner, Philippe, had open-heart surgery this week in a 7 hour-long procedure to replace a faulty valve, his second such surgery in 8 years and at age 36. At times like that, we cannot get around the question of mortality and the real meaning of life. My daughter was young to go through this experience at 31, and as she says, learned a lot about herself, about compassion, patience, and fear. Now, with a mechanical valve and serious life adjustments required, together they face a new beginning with a whole new set of challenges uncommon for their place in life.

More than anything, they are both more likely to live with a sense of gratitude for life and an appreciation for their time, an equally uncommon notion for someone their age. 

And is that not the ultimate life skill? How easy it is to take for granted the magic of the breath that flows through us and keep the miraculous network of systems doing what they do to keep us alive, laughing, crying, working, eating, loving. 

It is an intense reminder to those of us a little older, who have heard it enough: yesterday is truly gone and just a memory, and tomorrow is not here yet. There is no guarantee it will actually come. It leaves the moment, the now, the right here - our one and only currency. 

How do we learn to live in the moment with such gratitude and deep appreciation for life if we have not had a life-threatening experience to fast forward a wake-up call? 

Perhaps we can start simply by being humbled by our own life force.
Perhaps we need only to move through our days and hours with our eyes laser sharp and ears tuned in to discover new and old sounds and sights. Suddenly you hear a bird song that you would have otherwise completely missed. Or you notice the way the wind moves through delicate leaves in part of a tree while the other part is silent like space itself.
A dog barks or a cat sits in bliss in the sunshine. They too have a life force running through them from this date to that date. Animals don’t fret about life span. Or how it all works. They are busy being where they are and paying attention. We can learn to be more present simply from watching animals.

But we humans are gifted with the ability to reflect on our own functioning, reasons of being, and place in the bigger picture. We are able to contemplate the beauty of the mountains and oceans. We can feel the heat, the cold, and the wind on our skin and understand on some levels how forces so much bigger than us made that happen.

And then we forget.
Our heads look down and don’t notice how the universe, the stars, and the globe move, turn, and count regardless of how we spend, prioritize, or waste our time and part in it.

Perhaps one could argue that my daughter and her partner got lucky. To have a wake-up call this early instead of closer to when our time is up, when changing priorities and choosing to live fully can be less possible, less fulfilling, or less of an option. 

For myself – I learned that I don’t want to wait for a life threatening awakening to better appreciate what I have been given. And I will honor my days and hours and minutes more than ever, with a new sense of awareness to appreciate the gift of presence.

Philippe didn’t only get a new piece of heart. He gave all of us around him one as well.