BY KLAUS DÖRING
IT IS DEFINED as something that is the perfect embodiment of something. It is the most rich and best example of something.
Almost 16 years ago, a good friend of mine gave me a book written by the Establishment and founder of the Scottish Free Church, Thomas Chalmers, who lived from 1780-1847. During this time, I resided already in the Philippines for good and did some marketing work in the former Bishop Thibault Media Center near the San Pablo Church in Juna Subdivision in Davao City, while writing a column for the Catholic Herald and hosting radio shows for the former DXGN 89.9 FM “Good News Radio”.
Chalmers treated life’s quintessence with plenty flowering words. Yes, don’ t be afraid and live for something!
Human beings live, move and have to pass away – free from worries, but unknown and unnoticed. They live such an irreproachable life – reputable but so incomprehensible and inscrutable. Chalmers was very right.
Why do people live like that even knowing they have to leave the platform of life one day?
Why are people sometimes afraid to live and allow something or someone to block themselves?
Still in my mind is one statement of Brother Francis Castro from the Little Brothers of Jesus. I quoted it several times already and it really became my life’s motto: “I feel the burning flame inside me that makes me jump out of the bed…and hurry to work!”
Life’s quintessence can be also this: Kindness, by helping the blind man crossing a street; hospitality, by practicing generous reception of strangers and guests (my very first impression, when I stepped on Philippine soil in June 1976!); helpfulness, by taking care of somebody who is weak and dependent.
Believe me: your moment of virtue will never be destroyed by time’s storm. Henri Nouwen, a devotional writer and speaker whom I also admire very much, spent two hours daily bathing, shaving, dressing, and feeding a man who was so profoundly able to speak or walk. Very clear, in that daily act of loving, Nouwen exemplified the compassion and sacrifice of Christ.
Love and merciful actions shared with people, who cross our path – and nobody will forget us. In our daily life, we do have plenty of situations, where we could show our real calling. Good deeds are shining like stars from heaven. Deeds of love and service may not seem to be an efficient use of time and energy, but they are never wasted. Our life doesn’t run clock-counter-wise. The clock’s hands are the time dictators of everyone. So: do live for something!
Life… perhaps no more than just a figure of our own imaginations to explain the state of being in which everything exist. Even three billion years since the first appearance of living organisms on Earth, science still has yet to find out what the definition of life truly is; yet nevertheless, life is the most important aspect from which all other existence on this plant steams.
Without the first life on earth, there would undoubtedly be no “life” at all. Flash forward into the modern era and the same question that has plagued science for centuries still continues to raise controversy. In order to understand the arguments of modern genetic species revival, one must go back and understand the mysterious beginnings of life on Earth, and examine how one species could have evolved into every single species known to exist on earth today.
By seeing through history one can understand the present, which gives a meaning to the phrase “the quintessence of life.”
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