When A Sign Comes You Better Open Your Eyes and Your Ears

 

 In the last week, I have heard this story below in a book and a movie. I had never heard it before this, so when that happens I figure I better open my eyes and ears to a message. Here is the story and what I heard.

 

The Parable of Twins

In a mother’s womb were two babies.

One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?”

The other replies, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense,” says the other. “There is no life after delivery. What would that life be?”

“I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths.”

The other says, “This is absurd! Walking is impossible. And eat with our mouths? Ridiculous. The umbilical cord supplies nutrition. Life after delivery is to be excluded. The umbilical cord is too short.”

“I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here.”

The other replies, “No one has ever come back from there. Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery it is nothing but darkness and anxiety and it takes us nowhere.”

“Well, I don’t know,” says the other, “but certainly we will see mother and she will take care of us.”

“Mother?!” You believe in mother? Where is she now?”

“She is all around us. It is in her that we live. Without her there would not be this world.”

“I don’t see her, so it’s only logical that she doesn’t exist.”

To which the other replied, “sometimes when you’re silent you can hear her, you can sense her. I believe there is a reality after delivery and we’re here to prepare ourselves for that reality.”


I recently read this in the book Finding Meaning by David Kessler who co-authored with Elizabeth Kubler Ross. It is an incredible book on grief.

At the end of the book he offers this story and I found it so beautiful. To think that even in the womb, in our tiny little bodies, we might have had curiosities of purpose and creation. And the wonder of what life must be like, when the one that we know, ends. The thought that even then, our minds had the ability to choose what to believe as Truth.

I again heard it in a movie called Collateral Beauty with a ton of huge actors.  A beautiful movie by the way, if you get a chance, watch it. The writer was incredible! In the movie, a tragedy happens that brings of course suffering and difficulty.  The theme is that we must be able to see the "collateral beauty" that comes from our suffering. It's there if we open our eyes to see.  I most certainly have experienced this in my lifetime.  It is only through contemplation and reflection, in the quiet pause, that I realize that beauty once my grief has had time to process.

What my love, are you doing to make all things in your life meaningful? Can you find meaning in every thing, in every life experience, in every trial, in every joy, in every loss? We may never know what is to come until we get there, but can we engage fully in the gift of the present? Can you find growth and collateral beauty in the challenges, in the pain, in the grief?