When profound wisdom is inserted into a conversation without effort, it changes you in that moment.
I was sitting with my dear friend Mahtab and her family recently. We were all meandering the emotions that come when life is ending. To be specific, it was about her life coming to a close as she was completing her journey with esophageal cancer.
With conversations that involve finality and mortality, they are sensitive, awkward and beautiful all at once. Most of us don’t have practice in navigating the silences, sticky parts, depth and touchiness of it all. I certainly don’t, though I’ve been through this several times. It’s never easy or fluid yet it is beautiful and profound as it is happening and in retrospect.
We finished praying together – in Farsi and English, and it was beautiful. Mahtab had chosen prayers for her Mom, Faeghe and me to read with the equivalent in English so I would understand it all. It was a powerful experience being united with her family and connected to something greater at that time. I found peace with them.
Our conversation meandered from significant to humorous, memorable to inconsequential, we even dabbled into the state of our world right now. As effortlessly as you might inquire about the weather, Mahtab’s Dad, Khosrow offered some thoughts and in the middle of them said “unity happens one heart at a time” and finished his conversation.
As he dropped that gem, it made me gasp out loud. For Koshrow, this is obvious and simple. For me, it was a profound awareness in that moment being fully present, experiencing unity.