Moving through New York City’s fast-pace, life often seems a blur. Yet, within this city, a group of people quietly seek solace by spending time with the dying.
Lessons for the Living reveals a unique subculture of Hospice volunteers as they reflect on their experiences and philosophies of life and death. Among them, a teenager escapes from the drama of high school, a hard-edged corporate lawyer searches for meaning and a terminally ill woman faces her own death with unexpected humor and grace.
As the baby boomer generation nears its end, this film offers a timely look at what it means to face death. Lessons for the Living shows that the dying have a great deal to offer the living.
I remember my parents talking about buying items such as a fridge or a washing machine on the never never. We call that something else now. Monthly payments perhaps? Interesting it was called the never never back then in the 1950’s. Was it that re-payments lasted so long it never seemed they would end? Now there are monthly payment plans (on the never never): a mortgage, a cell phone contract, a bank loan, paying off credit card debt etc.
Being in debt, of any kind, is a huge stress factor. One of the major life stressors as I understand it. But imagine if one isn’t even credit worthy? Today I found out that I wasn’t. What a shock. Apparently one has to have been in debt and proved oneself able to pay it off to be able to be credit worthy. I couldn’t get my head around it this afternoon. Had I done something wrong? Was there something wrong or irresponsible in the way I’d been handling money? Well of course not but it took me some time to realize what the problem was and what the remedy is.
Stressful to be in debt and stressful not to be able to be in debt! Odd world.
People bump into Buddhism. A book falls off a shelf. A chance meeting. A poster in the street, a leaflet flying in the wind. Just seeing somebody sitting meditating can resonate deeply and be a seed that later takes root. Such encounters with Buddhism can save lives. They can and do cause people to turn their lives around to the good.
For example, a woman friend of mine curious about what I was up to joined me on a retreat in the late 1970’s at Throssel Hole Priory, as it was called then. She had a hard time during the retreat but made it through, glad at the end to at last have a cigarette! As we drove back into Wales on the Sunday afternoon she announced she would not now consider suicide as an option any longer! That she even had suicide in mind was a bit of a shock. Nothing more was ever said on the subject. She never went back for another retreat!
Today I met a woman while out shopping who told me about a Buddhist book that had been passed to her by a friend. Apparently the friend had been close to ending his own life and the teaching in the book had saved him. He’d then, years later, passed it on to help his friend. Wonderful! I hope it helped her. She certainly helped me. A really professional sales person.
Yes, I am out and about again. On a phone call this afternoon a reader ended a call with ‘thank you for being in the world’. Thank YOU all for being in the world. Remember to pass on. Lives can be saved.
