You remember where you were when emotional news interrupts your daily life.
Kathy Freeman winning gold at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
The first pictures of the 9/11 Trade Building burning and smaller things like the news of the passing of a friend.
It was a Saturday and my wife and I were with my daughter in law’s family in Sydney when the message came through that my friend’s wife (Mary, not her real name) had passed away after a yearlong battle with cancer.
The funeral was in 2 weeks.
Funerals are a very sad occasion. It is the final resting place. It is the time when mourners say goodbye in a formal setting and give support to those left behind.
Funerals are also a reflective time. A time to celebrate a person’s life and the joy they bought to the world. A world that is better because of them.
Mary was a devoted mother, wife and friend. The eulogies were testament to her love as reflected by her children, her husband and her bestie. Her life was remembered in words, pictures and music. We all reflected on Mary’s life at the funeral. We all reflect at any funeral.
This is the common element of funerals. Reflection not only about the person who has passed but the person who has a future – you. Funerals remind us of our mortality. And when we think mortality, we reflect on our own life.
This part of the funeral is the good part. Holding up the mirror, we never want to hold and asking ourselves those questions that we don’t want to answer.
In Bronnie Ware’s book “The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying” number 2 is
“I wish I had not worked so hard.”
Why would we think this on our last days of life when we know it now? The symptoms are all right in front of us. The stress. The busyness. The tiredness.
Why wait for a funeral to reflect? Hold the mirror up now and ask yourself what your Future Self might regret?
Worked to hard? Sacrificed family and friends? Should have exercised more?
The more we reflect the clearer our purpose and fulfillment of life.
We have time to make the changes and redirect our energies.
Look into the mirror often and make the changes, be them short or long term, so your Future Self has no regrets.
What do you do now that could be a regret in the future?
Reflection is a constant action in a Positive School Culture.
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