The Attention of Tending
Tags: Compassion, Care, Support, Awareness, Life Lessons

The effort to care is about caring at all. An attitude of helping actually aids the giver as well as the receiver. While life is stocked with those for whom sympathy is as foreign as a land they’ve never seen, I believe in a majority who fill our planet with a penchant for compassion. Endeavoring to exert an emphasis where it might be dismissed makes an incredible difference in our lives. The trickle from individuals through giant corporate to governmental structure is indispensably critical. Many are widely recognized during their living to lasting legacies of benevolence. Some may not reap the glory via fame nor fortune. The attention of tending extra nicely to the needs of a person or situation incites success. From a small-timer’s sentimental persuasion, I hope this compels to remind everyone how simple it is to nurture your attention in good stead for great use for yourself and others.

A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle. ~James Keller

Being crammed with a flurry of health issues is quite the burst bubble to a summer of sunshine’s usual high. Over three months of turbulently compacted life-altering information, late August through each of these words. Suddenly slammed with some cancer news, I’ve dealt with a myriad of medical doctors, nurses, staff, imaging centers, surgical sites, and hospitals. That’s more treatment in mucho-shy of one year than I’ve incurred in my prior forty-nine. Yet, with one stupendous variation. The regard with which I’ve been provided support makes up for the excruciatingly arduous weeks’ worth of phone calls to secure all of the imperative balls into motion. Most every step seemed artfully premeditated. Especially my pre-medicated moments crowded with minutia. Keeping my focus is a daunting consideration versus cautious challenges. But, doting hearts can outsmart the ugliest of affairs.

When it comes to the service of humans and their missions, I like to ponder that it’s rarely “the devil is in the details”. Rather, I bow to the holy indulgence that “God is in the detail”. I think that whomever got the wicked adage going was sorely neglected. It’s the finer points of an experience that rest in my memories. The way an entire operation lies favorably in your brain bank compared to any nervous interpretations of potential outcomes. I’m one to aim for beginnings and endings with smiles for miles, along with wide open communication. Although, the bustle of establishments already rampant on the anxiety meter makes the concentration toward scrutiny an increased talent of integrity. To feel special among one’s own fears is a genius gift. It doesn’t require as much an educational degree as it does a unique degree of warmth for survival. Those custodians of my body have rolled out their generous red carpets for my ease.

With a little love and some tenderness

We’ll walk upon the water

We’ll rise above the mess ~Hootie & the Blowfish, Hold My Hand

Ditching hitches takes a dedicated personality. Withal, life has her hiccups too. A few detours could have worn my tough days darker. Instead, people have extended a ritual of kindness. A clerical mistake by the hospital had me arrive promptly an hour delayed. Their inner panic nary portrayed, it became a game with all of us to see how fast we may solve my pre-op state. Not once did anyone break a stride to freak out or alarm me. Laughter alighted freely, even as it took three gentle pokes to fasten an IV into my right side. Whether surgeons stuck in traffic or near medication mishaps, I was kept cradled in calm’s arms. What we want granted for ourselves we may deliver for another. Our interest to allow things to matter allies effective conclusions. The shape of safety stems following the sincerity of concentration.

Equal to the exuberance I obtained with each restorative health professional lay an added expert therapeutic presence in the thoughtfulness of hairbands offered for my unruly braided tendrils, bags with checklists to collect my private belongings, extra blankies to stave cold quarters, and the legions of artworks adorning the walls. In one case, I immediately accepted the spirit of sea turtle symbolism. The drawing watchfully agaze above me. It’s global meanings a welcome affection amidst my circumstances for meeting it face to face. I reasoned that the somebody(ies) who chose this imagery which raises healing, longevity, luck, and endurance must have guessed a mortal like me would find it such an animated attachment. From the main surgeons to anesthesiologists or attending assistants scooping up my pee cups to the trainees, tending’s many tentacles corralled a protective place in which my senses remained settled. Welfare is wholly in the happy priorities made.

Aloha in Action, Photo by BradensEye featuring an ‘eye’-catching excerpt of Rick Mills ‘Healing Water’ glasswork at Maui hospital’s main entrance lobby

May the concern you shower outward awash you inwardly.