The Sequence of Goodness

“Until death, it is all life.” ~Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

The best thing I ate last week wasn’t actually anything I ate.

Scratch that. What I mean is that, what I am choosing to write about isn’t going to be about food. I’m going to write about something I drank. Or something having to do with something I drank, and the lesson that followed.

The Best Things

When I decided to start this blog, I decided to create a category on my website that would force me to write every week. Choosing to write about the best thing I ate every week seemed like a good idea. It—the best thing I eat every week— may not always be exciting or life-changing, but it does give me something to write about each and every week.

So what was different about last week? Nothing really, at least when it came to the food I ate. I had nachos and chips & salsa—in the same day; I ate some great tacos, and cooked some wonderful recipes at home; I had a carne guisada plate and a really good glob of queso flameado. I even had some pretty good pizza. Twice!

The reason none of those will be featured in this post is not because anything was wrong with any of it, but rather I was again reminded of all that is truly good in the world, because of something I drank.

Counting My Blessings

When I count my blessings, I more often than not count the number of good people I know, and have known in my life. Some of those people I’ve known a long time as I was fortunate enough to be born into a family where there is plenty of love and goodness. Others—like my closest friends—I’ve chosen, and chosen precisely because they also bring joy and love and a bounty of goodness to my everyday life.

Then there are the people who pass through. They pass through my life, and I theirs. Some faces I remember, and others I really don’t.

As a kid I thought the faces I didn’t remember were the good strangers who appeared in my dreams. I didn’t think I could “create” a person’s face, so it must be someone I once saw on the street, or in the grocery store, or so I thought. Maybe you have had the same experience or thought.

Maybe that good person passing through was the stranger who helped you change a flat tire, or that person behind you in line who gave you some spare change when you didn’t quite have enough to buy everything the cashier just put in the paper bag for you.

Or it was a person you worked with, either for a long time or a little while. They taught you a lesson, or told you a story you still remember, or maybe you remember how much they loved their wife. Or their ex-wife. Perhaps they told good jokes, and seemingly had an endless supply of those jokes to tell.

Passing through isn’t really the right way to describe what these people do, because many times, they truly do more than this. They don’t just pass through, they stay. They become a part of your life. Many have become a part of my life, and they have become much more than someone I’ve just met along the way, or spent a little bit of time with on my life’s journey.

Not Just Passing Through

My dad always said that it wasn’t the destination that mattered, it was the journey. It wasn’t where we end up, but how we get there, and what we do on the way. What we do, who we love, what we eat, how much we laugh. You get the idea.

My dad wasn’t a poet or a writer, but he loved the great poets and writers, and often quoted them. He especially loved those who wrote about daring adventures, and even adventures where the main character got lost. Actually, I think he loved those best. Getting lost along the way was part of the fun. Who knows who you might meet, what you might learn from someone else.

My dad would say we’re not just passing through, as the passing part is what it’s about. And why pass through at all? To live, to love, to eat, to laugh, (to smoke), and to spread a little cheer, a little goodness. In other words: live, every day, as much as you can, and with as much love and goodness as you can. After all, until death, it’s all life. I’m sure Cervantes influenced him with that bit of life wisdom.

Cervantes was, of course, a famous writer whose passing through this world influenced many others besides my dad. But you don’t have to be famous to do that.

Being at Peace

It has been almost four years now since my dad died. I’ve written before about this a little bit, but he died while on vacation, on a cruise ship in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. The Ionian Sea, actually, as later that night after everyone else had fallen asleep, exhausted and emotionally drained from the evening’s events, I looked at my phone and its GPS had us leaving the Ionian Sea behind.

I still miss my dad very much, but time has made it easier to deal with his absence. Right after his death, though, I had a hard time sleeping, and an even harder time falling asleep. It was a good six months before I finally got back to any sort of routine, which became a new routine as I had, at the time, been wiling to try anything to relax, and be at peace right before bedtime.

It’s kind of a long story, but part of my routine became having a cup of calming tea at night. My favorite tea became the Yogi brand because each teabag has a nice positive message on it. If you were to take a look at my phone or the screensaver on my MacBook, you’d see a few photos of some of my favorite messages.

Not all of the messages resonate with me, but many of them do.

Create the Sequence of Goodness

Before I fell asleep on Sunday, October 14th, I posted on social media—as I often do—a photo of that evening’s tea bag.

Create the sequence of goodness, consequences will be always good.

Create the sequence of goodness, consequences will be always good. It was a sweet sentiment, one that definitely resonated with me.

I was, and am, someone who definitely believes that what you put into the world will come back to you. Not in any magical or mystical way perhaps, but let’s face it, being happy is better than being miserable. And while I know it’s not that easy for everyone to just be happy and have happiness follow…it has pretty much always worked for me.

Besides writing this blog and planning my next travel or food adventure, I work for a living. My job for the last twenty years or so has been spent in human resources offices. For the last fifteen years at least, I’ve been the leader in those offices, and in those offices I’ve met many wonderful people who have passed through and made a difference in my life.

Goodness

Robert was one of those people. He was a man around my father’s age, and much like my father, he loved to enjoy life. He loved his family, he loved food, he loved San Antonio and he loved his work.

He loved his coworkers, me included. I knew it as much as I’ve known anything.

On the morning of Monday, October 15th, when my cell phone rang showing an employee calling me, I didn’t think anything of it. In my position, I get calls all the time. But I had never received a call like that, a call informing me that another employee was dead, killed.

When Robert didn’t show up that morning, everyone who expected him knew something was wrong, which is why two people went to his house to see if he was all right. He had heart problems, and that was everyone’s worst fear. Or so we thought at the time. Our worst fear became what was discovered. That someone, some monster, had killed Robert in his own home.

It was a brutal murder, with the story airing on the local news and written about in the local newspaper. We were in shock.

That day was beyond horrible in so many ways. Before that morning, I had never known anyone who had been murdered, and why Robert? He was one of the last people I could even imagine anyone wanting to kill. He was so good. He made everyone around him laugh. He always had a joke, or a funny story, and more often that not, a kind word.

After hanging up the phone that morning, the immediate memories of him that flooded my mind and my heart were of Robert being someone who got me through so much when my dad died. He went to the services, he checked on me in my office, he reminded me so often that my dad would want me to be happy, that my dad would want me to remember how much he loved me. Robert was such a good man.

I sat at my desk for several minutes feeling the blood drain from my face and then it wasn’t long before I remembered the night before, that last thing I had posted on Instagram before I went to sleep. I thought of that message.

Goodness? Robert was nothing but goodness, he created nothing but goodness. He wasn’t a perfect man, but if you knew him for one minute, you’d know. He was goodness.

Consequences

It has been many months since then. Many have mourned Robert. We miss him, but we’ve moved on, as people always do. He would want us to. His family continues to stay in touch as we’ve all hoped for justice to prevail. Of course, justice can’t make it right, it can’t bring anyone back. It can’t give us one of our long-time employees back, and it can’t give his two sons their father back. Justice can’t replace his laughter, or visit his favorite place for coffee or tacos. Justice, we hope, at least forces consequences.

Reminder of the Good

I still drink my bedtime tea and I still post the occasional good message. Last week, I got the goodness message again.

Create the sequence of goodness, consequences will be always good.

I groaned out loud and said, “I hate this one.”

When Peter asked me why and I told him, he said, “You know, they’re just tea bags…”

I know. They’re just tea bags, but I was mad. We talked a little about how the person they arrested for Robert’s murder was still in jail. We hadn’t heard anything in a few months. Did they catch the other guy? Did they recover all of the things stolen from Robert’s house? When is the trial? I hadn’t heard anything in several months.

Later that night before I went to sleep, I told Peter that whenever I thought about that first message, I often felt guilty about hating it as I knew Robert wouldn’t want me to think that way. He wouldn’t want me to let anything about the world change the goodness in me.

I took a picture of that tea bag that night last week but I didn’t post it. It still didn’t feel right.

Consequences Will Be Always Good

Robert’s son visited the next day, unannounced, to tell me that it was over. His dad’s murderer would never see freedom again. There had been a plea, he showed no remorse, but it was done. The family would never have to see his face again.

I got chills as he told me, not just because of the news but because of the stupid tea bag. I got chills because I had dreamed of Robert just the week before, we were at work, Robert was wearing his uniform, holding a cup of coffee, just as he always had.

I felt so strange, it was surreal that this had happened this day. Robert had been on my mind so much.

I told his son and his wife about the tea bag and its message, I showed them the photo, told them the story and we kind of laughed. I felt some relief. I thanked them for listening to me, and told them that I knew deep down that Robert would never want me to not believe the message on this silly tea bag. Create the sequence of goodness, consequences will be always good.

Later, some of us at work talked about it. The consequences aren’t always good. Sometimes they’re even horrible. Things, sometimes, turn out worse than any nightmare. Of course, just by being good doesn’t mean only good happens.

Or does it?

I think it took me writing this to realize that the consequences are always good, when you create that good.

Love is always good. Happiness is always good. Maybe not every day, not with everything that happens, but in what is left behind. Robert was good, he created goodness. The consequences he left behind will be always good.

I’m thankful to him for that last lesson, that lasting memory. His lasting goodness.

Create the sequence of goodness, consequences will be always good.

Elda XO

Note: Robert and I talked a lot about good food, and when I started this blog, he encouraged me. I’m grateful to him for all the love he showed me and all the goodness he left behind. So many stories after he passed surfaced of him lending someone money, or helping them get a car, or offering his home to them. The consequences are indeed always good. Let’s all create the sequence of goodness. Every day. XO