Lessons Learned

By Scott Coulter I attended a memorial service the other day for a fellow musician, someone I played with for a number of years. He was one of the greatest musicians I've ever had the pleasure to play with. And he was one of the most genuinely kind, good human beings I've ever known. His passing away relates to diabetes only on a broad level — on the level of learning to live gracefully with suffering, as Buddhists would say. (Side note here: Suffering is actually a rather poor translation — the original word is dukkha, and it's not meant to be sad exactly, as much as to denote the entanglements and impediments, the challenges and obstacles that can so easily derail us, rather than abject sadness or horror, though these are part of dukkha, as well.) Diabetes is only one form of that suffering, and not one he faced. But he faced his own suffering in ways that can teach ALL of us a thing or two about how to face our own troubles. Jesse used the time he had to give to others, express his voice to whoever was fortunate enough to hear it, and to create joy. I wasn't with him during his final days, but someone mentioned him joking and caring for others to his last minutes on this Earth. It's so easy for all of us to be jaded, to be greedy, to be irritated, to be closed off. We do it in big ways and in small ways. I've been obsessing for weeks about a new keyboard that I really want. Sure, it would be a little better than the one I have, but yesterday I remembered som...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs