If you could see your life from an ultimate perspective; would you, and what do you think you’d see?

One of my favourite books is the Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom. It’s about an 83 year old called Eddie, a maintenance man at a once popular seaside pierground amusement park. 

He, like us, lives with his own wounds and regrets; unresolved anger at his father, guilt from potentially killing an innocent person in Vietnam, a longing for his deceased wife, and wondering if his life really mattered; if he could have done more with it. He dies trying to save a young girl at the fairground, leading him to enter a heavenly realm where 5 people that he knew in some way or another greet him, and one by one, help him to understand his life.

There’s a part (spoiler) that stokes up a lot of emotion in me every time I come back to it. 

At the end, the significance of Eddie’s life is revealed to him; after finding out that his worst fear is true, that he had killed this innocent person who he had thought was an enemy, he is shown how many lives he had saved over the course of his life, as well as the small little moments of love and impact he had. 

He is shown all this by the same innocent person, a young girl named Tala. He is forgiven and comes to forgive himself for what had happened, and then he’s zipped out. He’s overlooking the pierground on the same beach he’d known for decades, where he sees every person whose life he’s touched; they are waving, smiling. And with that, he accepts his peace, and takes up his own role as one of those five people for others who pass on. 

Eddie would never have guessed that he could have that much impact, and I believe that’s true for so many of us. The truth is, the virtue of our lives is found in the in-betweens of things. The relationships between the dots. In our inter-actions, the time taken to digest an insight from a book or a conflict with another, meaningful coincidences, and the web of reverberations and knock-on effects that arise from our actions and restraint that all make themselves felt across the web of life. 

We all know what it’s like to look at our lives as Eddie did. We can punish and persecute ourselves while ignoring the inner worthiness and greatness that comes with existing on Earth, itself a point of light in the cosmic drama. Ignoring our wholeness and worthiness, we then withhold ourselves and our expression of goodness. 

At other times, it’s all too tempting to deny our inner wounds or cover them up. We try to portray the opposite realities in our outer lives; to present as an achiever, a person that’s going somewhere, knows better, is an example to follow, a rock of resilience, a role model. A person that hides their pain, often for the sake of others, and that itself is brave, it’s just that it can be innocently counterproductive. 

The message of this post? To give yourself space, compassion, ease, and a sense of peace. To zoom out, give yourself credit, to appreciate the ways, big and small, that you show up for yourself, your loved ones, and the wider world. To acknowledge your pain, your worries, and your struggles, which need not be denied or resolved, just witnessed, and that is enough. 

When we accept our lives in their totality: the doubts, the chores, the conflicts, the fears, the limits, the wounds, the good turns, the favours, the connection, and abundance, all as one; only then will we permit ourselves to live with joy and peace, effect change, and express ourselves across the paths and seasons of our lives. 

The peace that you seek is already with you; is you. It is rooted in presence, perspective, humbleness, balance, and compassion. The core variable in our experience of this, lies in the stance that we take to ourselves and to life itself.