Response to 'Red Sky in the Morning'

It's amazing how a simple realization can alter your perception of someone almost completely. Especially a person for whom you've felt a certain amount of animosity towards for quite awhile. While someone's actions may seem inexcusable to you at one point in time, oftentimes more information can change the way you think about something. It is quite often easier to live with a misconception of someone than the truth. The truth can quite often be painful, whereas a misconception is convenient. You can shape it any way you so choose. The truth forces you to look at things in a different light, something that is naturally difficult for us to do. It is so much easier to use our lens of experience to judge everyone else. What we must learn is that we cannot do this. Everyone has a diverse background, a different way of looking at the world, a different lens as it were. While this in itself is a truth I had excepted for some time, I really had not begun to live by it until this summer. That was when I learned that a person for whom I cared about very much would not be with us much longer. This cast a whole new light upon a year's worth of experiences. I understood now the reason for this individual's dark moods, and the times he would yell. I could not even begin to understand how oppressive the doctor's sentence must have seemed to him. He would often confide in me when I was younger about the things he still wished to do with his life. He would smile when he finished and say "Someday, Ian." But last year, he realized someday wasn't coming. But eventually, the darkness had passed. He was still dying, nothing would change that, but he had resolved not to let it ruin what remained of his life. He began to smile again. And best of all, he began to live. Because none of will live forever. "He not busy born is busy dying" the immortal bard Bob Dylan once sang, and how true those words ring. Life is sweet, and oh so short. I realized that this summer. If you allow the sadness to overwhelm you, it's not really living any more.