Who is greatest among your peers?

This morning as I was preparing to go visit a former class mate I remembered Bunny.  She was fortunate and healthy enough to attend her 50 year High School class reunion before she passed away (may she rest in peace).  She said there were less than a dozen people there and of those who did attend - none of them were well acquainted during their formative years although they knew of each other.  She said they all had a good time and laughed and laughed about common events of the past and a few of them even danced.  Amongst her recant of that and other past events - Bunny essentially said:  I guess that only the happiest, kindest and most loving people survived.

This morning I'm wondering if there is any truth to that idea.  As I think back over all of my former class mates who are no longer among the living I wonder if they were happy.  With the exception of one, I didn't know any of them to be loving or kind people.  But what I thought of them was not the tale tale.  At a funeral I went to recently criticism after criticism was hurled about the deceased.  But, that person treated me like gold.  He empathized with all of my challenges and struggles in life.  He helped without me asking and he offered me his assistance in a situation that I didn't know he knew about.  Although he didn't appear to be a happy person, he was certainly loving and kind.  He also outlived the exceptions of many.

The messages I want to convey with this post are:  Find out what makes you happy in your soul and practice it, meditate on it. make it you waking, living, breathing place.  Practice loving kindness daily.  We have no control of what others think about us; but we have absolute control over the truth we know about ourselves.   -Be happy, loving, and kind - the quality and or length of or lives (not the opinions of others) may depend on it.

In joy,

Andrea