Life Review: The Highlight Reel

They say when you die there flashes before your eyes a review of the life you have lived. On this highlight reel are all the things of significance that you did, or failed to do.

And as you see the images of your choices flashing before your eyes, you find- so they say- that you have done things of great significance of which you had no consciousness.

Surprisingly, you see that things you did that you thought were of great importance don’t even make the list.

Maybe you see that quiet moment when you listened attentively to a person whose heart was burdened, offering quiet solidarity without saying a word.

Or the occasion when you comforted an animal in distress, whose pain you attended to without any words spoken to ask for help.

The purity of heart you showed when offering an insignificant item- a bottle of water, a kleenex- to someone who needed to know, in that moment , that they were seen and cared for.

Surprisingly, not on the list might be the charity work you dedicated your life to, or the organization you chaired, or the career you flourished in.

Only God knows the moments of true value and significance in the lives we have lived.

And maybe also the person who is touched by our acts.

I heard that after I left school there was one student who told her mother, crying, that the only person who made her feel that she wasn’t invisible was gone.

I had no clue who the girl was, nor that a small act like a nod in the morning had made an impact on her life.

Yesterday I had reached a low point and a place of true disillusionment with humanity. I felt my mind clouded by disappointment.

So, to the random guy at my soccer game who ran after me and offered to be my crutch as I hobbled to the car after an injury, you won’t ever know what that small, unsolicited act of kindness meant to me . It wasn't the shoulder you lent me that mattered, it was the generosity within you that spontaneously welled up in that act of assistance.

At that moment, my loss of hope dissipated.

And whether or not I ever see you to thank you is of no importance. In fact, I don’t even know if I would recognize you to be able tell you this:

On the day when your physical life expires, the life review that flashes before your eyes will most certainly include that act of pure intention that shifted my heart’s pain into a moment of restored hope.

And no thank you I could ever express will ever equal the feeling you’ll have when that moment of generosity of spirit shows up on your highlight reel.

We may never meet again, but my gratitude follows you until the end of this rainbow.