Teach Me

I want to be more than sorry. I want to be more than just a listening mouth or an attentive ear, more than a hand on a shoulder or hug that supposed to say what words cannot. But how? That's all I keep asking myself--how can I be more, do more. It's just so hard to deal with the fact we are helpless. We are leaves blowing in the summer wind, shed in the fall. We are snow dancing to the earth in the winter, melted into spring puddles. We are shooting stars in a one-act play. We are here today. Who knows about tomorrow? But of all the things we cannot control, there is one thing we always can.

Tonight you taught me that. You smiled. You stood up there and smiled and laughed and filled the room with light, manufactured light. All the things you could have done, all the things I know I would have done, you disregarded and, instead, decided to smile. Watching you, I was the one with tear-filled eyes, not you.

Our lives are so filled with experiences and sights, but it is the people in our life who make us feel whole, feel full. Our greatest teachers are rarely the ones who fill our backpacks and quantify us. Our greatest teachers show us how to live a full life. Never will I forget today--the day one of my greatest teachers taught me how to manufacture light within the darkness.