Guest Beli-Blogger Bradley W.: IS IT A QUESTION OF HOPE?

For all those regular Beli-Blog readers, you'll remember Mikal posted about Matt Holzmann's experience with an auto accident, and the resulting "post-traumatic high." Just this week I was once again reminded of how fragile life can be. My mother (who is the Director of Ministry for Incarnate Word Academy Catholic High School during her now retirement years) called me yesterday and was virtually in tears. One of her former students--who is now a freshman at Mizzou, and who experienced the loss of her mother less than four years ago to a car accident, in which she was a passenger--just this past week lost her father to an auto-accident. She now remains in this world with no family, no siblings, aunts, uncles, or cousins. How does one find the confidence to go on in life amidst such loss and pain?

The reason I've posted about this is for very personal reasons. At the tender age of 19 (which was 11 years ago), I lost my father to Lou Gehrig's disease... and I'm STILL in emotional pain over the loss. Has it brought change to my life? Certainly... but do we know any different, and is the change not just a natural progression of life anyways? All these experiences contribute to the grand journey of life. The question we have all been asking about these types of experiences is how do we find the beauty, and the awe-inspiring emotional blanket of warmth we know as "right life" again and again, amidst the trials of a somewhat mundane existence?

I propose it's a matter of HOPE. Hope is a strong motivating force, driving humanity towards what may be considered impossible to attain without.

I HOPE to live a life that is fulfilling
I HOPE to fulfill my role in humanity
I HOPE to have fun in the journey
I HOPE to have the courage to be
I HOPE to realize what a grand gift life is
I HOPE to wake up each day and smile at the rising sun
I HOPE to find the bliss of life in everything I do...no matter how mundane
I HOPE to always live life according to motivations that really matter

*I HOPE this young woman who lost so much, finds HOPE through living life.

While none of us have the answers, we can begin to HOPE that we will have the courage to be who we are asked to be when these profound experiences force us to dig deep into our humanity... and maybe, just maybe, that ember inside will burn a little brighter each new day.

"How do we find the beauty, and the awe-inspiring emotional blanket of warmth we know as "right life"...?" Through perception. I firmly believe that my experience was enhanced by my knowledge that birth is the leading cause of death, it claims 100%, and just accepting what was. I was alive and I was in a car accident. I could have looked for explanation in a higher power. I could have turned to anger for my very lost material possession. I could have had myriad reactions to the event that entered my life unexpectedly. I chose to take the facts, relish in my good fortune and move on. Moving on doesn't necessarily mean forgetting. It means not being paralyzed by the life that happens to us daily.

I hope that the woman can look back on the good times and remember fondly those that had surrounded her. I hope that woman can pick up and move on.

As Jesse Jackson once said to me at Brown (and to many others over time): "Keep hope alive!!" My home state of Rhode Island adopted "Hope" as its state motto. So, you're in good company.