Life really is too short

In a rather bizarre sequence of unrelated occurrences, three of my friends' parents died over the last few days. Two were sick for a while and the other died from a sudden heart attack Sunday night.

Two funerals were held today, back to back, so I went to both.

All I could think of throughout both services is that life really is too short, there is truly never enough time to spend with those we really care about. We sort of take it for granted that those folks that mean the world to us will always be there. They'll grow old with us and never leave our side. It sounds silly and naive but it's true. Who really wants to think of their parents, friends and loved ones leaving them? Who really wants to be left alone on this earth?

It is a terrible and sad fact of life that no one is here forever and throughout the course of our own life we will have to say goodbye to someone we love dearly.

If the thought of that doesn't wake us all up to spend any precious time we have with those we love, then I don't know what will. We should make it a habit to devote spending a good portion of our day with those we say we care about. Because a job, house, car, possessions and bills will all go along their merry way without us when we're gone. We wouldn't miss those things anyway, those are all the material aspects of life. And even if we did miss it, we could always buy a replacement.

But we would miss our family, friends and loved ones dearly. And that's the one thing we can't replace - those persons in our life.

We all are God's miracle to each other and my only hope is that I can spend the rest of my life with those I care about.

May Damon's dad, Michelle's dad and Johnny's mom all rest in peace.

No such thing as coincidence

There's no such thing as coincidence.

Not if you're thinking about something and the next thing you know that same said thing happens. e.g. you're listening to the radio, thinking about hearing a particular song and next up on the playlist is your song. That's right, playing on the radio is the song you were just humming in your head.

Surely, that's not coincidence?

What about you're reading a book and a few things that are mentioned in the book are spoken to you by someone a few days later. Now how could that person know what you've been reading?

Here's another one: your mind runs on someone, shortly after the phone rings and on the other end of that call is the person you were just thinking about. How could all this be just by chance?

Me personally, I think it's the powers that be working in harmony with our mind and soul. When our mind and soul are in harmony with the universe strange things start happening, things that we can't explain. We decide to give these occurrences a name, so we call it coincidence.

But what if there's no such thing? What if what we think eventually comes to pass? What if our thoughts dictate our own world. Almost like we are writing our own movie, changing the script of life as we go along. If so, then we can change what we narrowly define as our reality. We can change our thought patterns and change our actions and by extension our lives.

Now if we could just harness that whole process to make the world a better place for all of us, because we are all inter-connected, we all affect each other's survival; if we could just do that, then I think we would be doing humanity and the world a great service.

Don't you think?

Talk about a change in the weather

So this time of year we usually have what we call our dry season here in Trinidad, and this year it's not dry, it's sweltering. Usually we get a bit of rain but not this year, no sir. We haven't seen rain in months.

By contrast, the end of 2008 till early 2009 was rainy all the time, which is unusual. Normally we don't see constant heavy rainfall till May, June. But this year, oh man we are having a heat wave and we are in trouble.

Our water supply is running low and I think everyone is a bit worried. I mean when exactly is it gonna rain? Trees and grass are drying up everywhere and our mountains are on fire, literally burning in the day and night. It's rather sad and downright scary. When will it rain? It can't come soon enough.

I love the rainy season more than the dry season, especially on days when it rains the whole day through. The place gets really cool and everything seems just to slow down a bit more. Everyone seems to be more chilled out when it rains here. Some people won't even venture out their house on rainy days. Yes sir, it's that much of a deal.

On days like that, a good movie, a book or even a few hours playing guitar is all good relaxation really.

Here's hoping and praying that it rains soon, because our lil twin island of Trinidad & Tobago needs it. I heard that our fellow Caribbean islanders are also suffering from a very dry season.

For all of us here in the West Indies, rain can't come soon enough.

Let it rain! Soon!