Guideposts - Week Four

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.
 

--His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

A co-worker of my sweetie's died in an avalanche last week.  (Death seems to be a recurring theme for us in the past two months.) Younger than us, possessed of a megawatt smile and personality, owner of a dog-clone of our late aussie shepherd, avid skier.  My heart goes out to his family left behind.  

There was a lot of public comment on that very experienced group "recklessly" skiing when the avalanche danger was high.    It's easy to judge whether you do or don't know all the facts.  Sadly, most of the comments were negative and unkind, calling it suicidal, complaining about what the rescue must have cost the taxpayers, at best remarking on stupid choices people make.  None of those people knew Ricardo.  None cared that their rants might would cause the survivors heartache.

I had thought of choosing a new quote about kindness for this week's guidepost, but I realized that compassion alone should have tempered the remarks aired in the public forum.  Rather than anger or sorrow, I feel compassion for those individuals who obviously lack it.  None of us get out of life alive.  And few of us choose to believe that.  What we have between birth and death is the ability to love and live and make the world a little better than we found it.  Some of us die at 5, at 15, at 51, at 105...our age doesn't matter.  What matters are the memories we've created.  

Ricardo brightened up his corner of the universe before he departed to a different existence.  Requiem in pacem.