A Separate Peace

Strategy

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Blake Leath

As a boy, I just loved the book A Separate Peace.  Sad, yes, but beautifully written, simple, and powerful enough to make an impression that has lasted thirty years.

In recent months, two acquaintances and one good friend have metamorphosed into three quite different people.  Two at the hand of a stroke, and one at the hand of encephalitis.

Today, I find them even kinder, warmer, gentler, more patient – and altogether delightful and inspiring to be around.  One jokes that he’s had “a personality transplant,” and he’s right.  His new perspective has led to a heightened appreciation of so many things.

Expectedly, when tragedies initially befall us, we struggle to come to terms with our new realities.  I know this is true for me in my own tiny circumstances.  Since December 2007, I have lived with chronic pain that subsequent surgeries merely refashioned rather than removed.  For perhaps eight months, I prayed and expected to fully turn the corner and get my old life back.  Fifteen months later, I remain increasingly acceptant of my new reality. 

Whatever befalls us, it’s best to carry on in whatever ways possible and find purpose and joy in every viable nook and cranny.

We are not promised Happiness, but Hopefulness is there for the taking.

And while we are not destined on this 3rd rock from the Sun to achieve any lasting peace, it is possible to find a separate peace, unlike the temporal sorts we generally seek.

I’ll close with two quotes that really move me.  I hope they move you, too. 

“Hi, Jules.  It’s Brian.  I’m on a plane and we’ve been hijacked, and it doesn’t look good.  Hopefully, I’ll talk to you again, but if not, please have fun and live your life the best you can.  Know that I love you and no matter what I’ll see you again someday.”

  Brian Sweeney  (At 8:58 A.M. on September 11, 2001, Brian Sweeney, a businessman who had once flown F-14s for the Navy, was on his cell phone trying to reach his wife, Julie.  She wasn’t home, so he said goodbye into the answering machine.  Moments later, Sweeney’s plane [United flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles], crashed into New York’s World Trade Center.)

“Nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around this world with His finger on the triggers, His fist on knives, His hands on steering wheels… never do we know enough to say that a death was the will of God.  My own consolation lies in knowing that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”   

  William Sloane Coffin, former chaplain at Yale, in a eulogy for his son Alex, age 24