Kilroy J. Oldster

A person must move beyond guilt and unexamined thoughts and motives in order to discover a purpose for living vibrantly.

We develop our whole character from our thoughts, actions, attentive observations, and from the resolute pursuit of our inspirational dreams.

All overt and covert emotions would shrivel without the beam of contrast and comparison to supply context and implication. We need the value of counterpoise to recognize and distinguish between similar and dissimilar concepts. How do we identify the importance of hope if we never felt despair? How do we appreciate the value of society and companionship until we experience solitude and loneliness? What would any relationship be unless draped with the boughs of thoughts and feelings, without the ongoing interaction between conscientious action and unreserved devotion, without endless empathy fused with boundless love? In the ring of time, without the verve supplied by both the real and the imaginary, life would be bland, insipid, and lackluster.

We inhabit an internal world that is subject to diversification. Every day we undergo personal transformation based upon experiences, thoughts, and feelings.

Human migration is an important part of our ancestral story. The places we live shape us, the places we leave behind forges our history, and the places we might travel to becomes our mysterious future.

Human inertia induces us to believe that our lives will never change unless we relocate.

What gives a person__ brief time on this planet meaning is engaging in small acts of kindness. Bestowing an act of kindness upon other people is the greatest gift that a person will ever give to other people and such acts shall renew the gifting person. When we unreservedly accept and love our brethren, we become the ineluctable wind that vivifies the lives of other people.

Nature blessed every person with the innate capacity to express wonder and awe for the eternal world and act with a kind and unstinting soul.

A person__ attitude creates the tone of his or her life. The highest expression of human dignity is to live a purposeful life devoted to principles and exhibiting compassion for other people.

Unless we understand how the twists and turns of life operate to make us, we cannot comprehend who and what we are. Without self-awareness, we are blind to registering the intertexture of other people__ inner life. Gracefully enduring personal hardships expands our minds to extend sympathy and empathy for other people. By casting our personal life experiences into a supple storytelling casing, we create the translucent membrane that quarters the fusion of our flesh, nerves, blood, and bones. Self-understanding is an essential step in loving the entire world.

We nurture our own being by respecting all people and consciously working to mitigate the pain of the world.

We can only come to terms with our own place in the world by compassionately commiserating with the pang of longing that our brethren experience.

Every person struggles with the self to find and kindle their special radiance, which comes from cultivating kindness, charity, and love.

We foster personal meaning out of life by exulting in all of nature, exhibiting a reverence for people, animals, plants, and by expressing compassion and sympathy for the entire community of life.

Lacking natural equilibrium, I used writing as an illustrative means to center myself in a world filled with haziness and uncertainty. My self-drafted obituary will not bemoan death but shall celebrate life by giving heartfelt thanks for all the people that brightened actuality with their kindness, friendship, noble acts of charity, and expressions of universal goodwill. It was a privilege to exist in this wrinkle of time with many people devoted to burnishing the sharpen edges of life. The heavens blessed me with many years to discover why it is beautiful to live and die in a world where the hills and wind, the rivers and seas, stars and moon, and revealing sunlight shall persevere.

The whole of eternity is present now. We apprehend eternity through our senses and mental imagination. We can never recapture lost time. Memory allows us to taste the scintillating experience of living by recollecting our past in a series of sequential personal events and an orderly arrangement of a linked series of cultural happenings. Writing our personal story calls for us to remember the sensation of what it entails to live tactilely before losing lucidity of the mind.

Our most potent memories include the taste and smells of foods we enjoyed as a child in part because it reminds us of who fed us a meal.

Without the mellifluous notes of memory, there would be no songs to sing, no ballads dedicated to past afflictions or affections, and no church hymns celebrating the trials and tribulations of saints, martyrs, and holy deities. Without respect for memories for days gone by, we would lack impetuses to write poems or produce literature reflecting the bitter hardships and ineffable joys of human life. Without a reference to the past serving as an ethical compass pointing the way forward, we would be oblivious to the inequities committed by foes and the glorious deeds performed by our ancestors; we would lack the essential evenhandedness required of every caretaker; and we would be poor stewards of this planet. The loss of memory severs us at the stem from one another. Without the bond of shared memories, we would each remain forever unconnected to our brothers and sisters. Without the twigs of memory, we would lead a life as dry and disjointed as withered leaves scattered by a cruel wind.