What is important

Mum kept on telling me to go to bed, as it was way past midnight. She likes to scold me when I go to sleep after midnight, because growing up she has told me countless times that the body, or at least certain organs, need complete rest between eleven at night and two in the morning.

But I felt like talking to her, and it has been a good while since I last spoke for more than half an hour with her. Perhaps I felt like talking to her, listening to her thoughts and what she has been up to, because earlier in the evening a dear friend, whom I have not met for a while, came over for dinner. We caught up and exchanged notes on life and its counterpart, death. She and I have both lost people dear in our lives in recent years, and in that loss is a bond of humanity we share. A sense of humanity in remembering people who touched us once, and still touch us when we think of them... a sense of humanity in longing, in mourning, in overcoming pain with the recognition that life goes on, life must go on, even after someone is gone. It is a rare sense of humanity that makes us human, makes us know and appreciate that in this great big world there are others who share your pain, share your loss, and who are not afraid to reach out to comfort you in times of need.

"What is important in life...?" mum said at one point in the conversation. More a rhetorical question than anything else, for really, at the end of the day, what is more important in life when it is so fragile, so short? The more I encounter troubles people make, noises people brew, conflicts and hatred people foster, the more I feel like detaching myself from it all.

What is important in life...  beyond the titles, the signs of material wealth, the  sense of self-importance and sense of self-righteousness we are so vulnerable and susceptible to illness and death that can wipe everything away.

In no way is it thinking or being nihilistic or suggesting that there is no purpose in life. But sometimes it helps to stop, to shut out the world around you, and reflect on what is really important in life....