“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” ~ Joseph Campbell.

I have never been good at long-term planning.  I remember being surprised when a nephew of mine, who was maybe 21 at the time, declared that he would have to change his life plan due to an obstacle he encountered.  My thought was ‘Life plan? Who has a life plan?’  I had the same reaction to a co-worker once when she explained that she and her husband planned to only have one child.  At the time I had four children at home and thought to myself, how do you do that?

I recently was listening to an article about the challenges of being in your twenties, how hard it is to learn to navigate the world of jobs and responsibilities.  The discussion reminded me of those memes that had done the rounds some years ago.  There were videos of so-called ‘third world’ people complaining about ‘first world’ problems like Starbucks messing up your order for a vanilla chai latte while they stood in front of a home with no electricity and no running water.   Sometimes we become so absorbed in our privileged lives that we forget that for some people, mere survival and real existential threats consume their waking moments.

Then I reflected on how lucky I have been throughout my life.  One of the challenges for those in their twenties, apparently, is finding a job that is meaningful. For me, deciding to become a nurse was a very simple choice (I never seriously considered any other option), and from the start of nursing school I recognized that this was not a job, it was a calling.  There were so many moments in those three years spent mostly at the bedside (the theory was packed into two weeks of lectures every 3 months or so) that have stayed with me.  From my patients I learned so many life lessons. 

When I migrated from the UK to the USA the biggest culture shock I experienced was in the way healthcare was run.  I could not believe that there were for-profit hospital systems.  Over forty years later it still seems sick to me that the healthcare industry (not to mention the Pharmaceutical industry) makes a profit of ill-health (an oxymoron if ever there was one). Although there have been strides made towards health promotion and disease prevention, we still see more  commercials for medications (for diseases we may never have heard of) than for healthy life-style choices.  Insurance companies are finally incentivizing weight loss, smoking cessation, gym membership and more, but only because it is in their financial interest, not out of a genuine concern for our nation’s health.

As I have told many people over the years, I love nursing, but hate healthcare.  Although I have many positive memories of my interactions with my patients and their families, there was much frustration at the time constraints, the pressures, the tasks that interfered with the act of delivering nursing care.  Like many nurses I moved away from the bedside and first into management, and then into teaching.  And once again I found a career that was truly rewarding, without really having been looking for it.  A chance open invitation to become a nursing instructor was made at a meeting I attended, and I thought, why not?

The recent solar eclipse event this week reminded me of my earliest memory of seeing the vastness of the universe.  It was on my family’s first voyage to Jamaica from the UK.  We were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and my father came and woke me and my brother up to come up on deck.  The night sky was dark and velvety and awash with more stars than I had ever seen before.  There was no light pollution, and he could point out the Milky Way, Orion’s Belt, the Plough, and more of those constellations.  Even though it was awe-inspiring, I was a little embarrassed, as I was out in public in my pyjamas wearing a robe that my mother had cleverly crafted out of toweling material, to double as a cover up for the beach.  I was sure that all of the passengers who saw me that night would see me the next day by the pool wearing the same robe!

Today I heard that during the total eclipse, internet usage around the world dropped by fifty percent! Finally, we stopped looking down, and looked up! It was wonderful to see so many people gathering together, forgetting about political and other differences, and being unified in their response to the eclipse.  It was also interesting to hear that Benjamin Banneker, an African American naturalist and mathematician, born in 1731 was able to accurately forecast solar eclipses!

It is reassuring to know that with or without our plans, the earth, the planets, the universe all continue doing their thing, following their cosmic design, despite man’s best efforts to mess things up.  On days when it seems as if your life plans are not working out, the constancy of the sunrise and sunset, the moon steadfastly waxing and waning as it orbits our earth, these are things we can rely on.  And even though we may not have all the answers, or even know the right questions to ask, we can still ‘…look up, and laugh, and love, and lift’.

This Friday morning I hope you had an opportunity to appreciate the eclipse, even if not in person.  And don’t worry, there is a total eclipse taking place every eighteen months somewhere on the globe! It may just require some planning on your part, and the cooperation of the weather! One story I heard was of a young boy who made plans when he was about eight years old to travel to see the next total eclipse that would come in seven years time – and then he made astronomy his career so he has seen many total eclipses since then. 

Have a wonderful weekend, Family! And remember to look up, it helps to put all earthly problems into perspective.

One Love!

Namaste.