Ever wonder what happens to everyone? Ambiguous certainly. You and I walk the streets daily sometimes making eye contact with passerbys, and sometimes totally absorbed in our heads we miss our fellow humans. Yet what if you saw someone for the last time before they went about their daily routine only to never complete their day. Who would remember them? Family, perhaps. However what if you were the last person to their last imprint of a memory. Would you honor that memory? What responsibility of consciousness would you bear?

I had a patient recently who had come to the office for a check up. He walked out of the office and left the building and turned a street corner and was randomly shot. I will never see him again. Yet I and everyone else continue their day once the brief mourning has passed. The memory of that person is always etched into my subconscious. Moreover, I have grown to realize that any person I meet or pass by can live their last breath after I see them, or vice versa. We are all connected in a vast pool of consciousness, unfortunately my mind like presumably yours,  is so distracted that it does not comprehend the presence of another until it is fully forced into the moment of now.

Imagine the awesome strength of shifting a gaze and acknowledging the essence of another being as we rush about our day halter and skelter.

We believe we are separate and individual, yet the simple gratitude of our lives is not enough  to accept the idea that we are not separate and moreover part of a cohesive mass of collective consciousness. It is easy to reconnect once inebriated with love. As the  awakening of the spirit occurs it is not just the acceptance of another that materializes, but the tolerance and the acknowledgment of myself becomes paramount. And so I recognize the nature of others as part of the oneness of all. In doing so I now can mourn the loss of any departed soul more fully and can bid them farewell on their journey regardless of the circumstances of their death. A more fitting adieu of a fellow being through memory and a heart felt acknowledgment that they even existed is sometimes all any of us need in life and not just in the years after death.

Humbly stay present and silently note people and nature around you. I try not to be so in my head that I fail to account for my surroundings. With each recognition of another you also are acknowledged and validated. This is just as much an exercise for yourself than simply being on a vigil of all around you. This is not a mission of political handshaking to every stranger on the road to support your cause, but more an opportunity to connect with another soul in physical form.

Time is limited, don’t be that last one standing or the forgotten .