A significant emotional event (S.E.E.) is a personal and life-altering situation that can happen to any of us at any time. It could be a serious medical prognosis, an unexpected change in jobs or professional positioning, or the loss of a loved one. Regardless of religious, spiritual, or logical beliefs, S.E.E.s serve to raise our own awareness of all that is happening around us, and we will never see things the same way again.
“It's funny how a city can put on a different face, when it holds the one you care for it becomes a different place.” That’s a line from “Sunday Morning Sunshine,” a love song by Harry Chapin, but a place can also become terribly different because of an adverse significant event. The city may be a New Orleans after a major hurricane, or an Oklahoma City after a terrorist bombing, or it just might be where you found, and then lost, a love.
There are many posts on Facebook like “Each day is precious,” “You never know when the last day is,” “Treat each day as if it were the last”; well, you get the point.
We are surrounded by encouragement to slow down and appreciate life. Tim McGraw pushes us to “…live like you were dying.” Ironically, the late Toby Keith sang about his desire to put aside unimportant things and to “…start livin’ is the next thing on my list.” Robert Frost tells us about the time he stopped one evening to “watch the woods fill up with snow,” but in another poem he states “…yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” (Do some of you over sixty remember Seals and Crofts singing “...we shall never pass this way again”)?
My dogs and I go on walks, but there is a difference between times with and without them. The dogs want to amble and sniff everything; we call it “reading.” I, on the other hand, catch myself telling them to “c’mon” because I tend to measure my steps in blocks, miles, minutes, or some other form of accounting.
Lately however, I’ve caught myself “reading” more and counting less as I look at sunsets, flowers and plants, street signs, cars, and other people. Almost as if to reinforce this behavior, my library recently posted a sign at the main door showing a father holding a child as they both point to a tree with a tweeting bird perched in it. The caption reads: “When you’re out with your child, talk about sounds that are all around you…Ask what they hear and where they think it might be coming from.” The sign’s concept is to teach your child to pay attention to, and connect with, the world.
TS Eliot said: “We must not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”
I think what Eliot meant is do we really know a place like the back of our hands or do we just live day-to-day with no forethought of how our accumulated experiences might change the way we see that place.
Try this dramatic scene: Say you are having dinner with a special someone at your favorite restaurant, how would you act during that meal if you knew you’d never be with that person again? Would you remember the specifics of the food you ate, the drinks, the physical surroundings, the conversation? Would you pay more attention to all the details or would they just blend into hazy memories of a lost future?
Look this up on the internet: “Reason, Season, and a Lifetime” by Brian A. Chalker, who says people will move into and out of our lives in various lengths of time, sometimes noticeably short ones, like sitting next to and visiting with someone on an airplane. That person shares something you may need at that moment in life.
If the need is still unfulfilled, then the person may stay involved longer, e.g., the season or the lifetime; however, regardless of timeframes, when you finally learn the lesson, you have to apply it by yourself and the other person moves on.
Perhaps all my rambling is simply to say we should live in the moment. No, I’m not talking about the eat, drink, and make merry type of abandoning structure and order, I’m proposing we look at the places we visit and the people we know as if it were the last time we might see them; absorb the details and remember them with affection, take in all they have to offer with respect and compassion and truly see them as if it were for the first time.
This observation is not to compare or contrast types of events that become “significant” to each of us, but I do suggest if you have not experienced one yet, you will someday. We all come from, and are going to, somewhere; we usually just don’t think about it at the time. But perhaps we should!
Best regards to all, and let’s be safe out there.
