An Answer For The Angels

Angeles Arrien’s chapter for August in Living in Gratitude focuses on the theme of Cultivating Peace. She begins with one of my favorite stories, one in which the Jewish teacher Zusia tells his followers of a powerful vision he had received that had shaken him profoundly. In his vision he had learned the standard by which he would be judged after his death. “I learned that the angels will ask me about my life,” he told his followers. “They will not ask me why I was not a Moses leading my people out of slavery. They will not ask me why I was not a Joshua guiding my people into the promised land. Instead they will say this: ‘Zusia, there was only one thing that no power of heaven or earth could have prevented you from becoming.’ They will say, ‘Zusia, why were you not Zusia?’”

I love the story because it is testimony to the fact that each of us has a unique calling and destiny to fulfill. When we fail to do so, we violate a sacred covenant.

My husband wrote a book on the concept of authenticity (see here). But these days I’m thinking of the concept of authenticity in relation to our oldest son, Owen, who is getting ready to start a new life in another part of the country. He is different in many ways from his parents–an engineer born into a family of wordsmiths, the only one in our family who can do high-level math and (even harder) figure out how to program our kitchen clock radio. One of the great joys of being his mother has been seeing how differently his mind works. On his own, he has had to learn how to find his way in a world very different from ours. He has become his own unique person, following an interior call audible only to him. Owen isn’t a religious person (another way in which the apple fell far from the tree), but I think the odds are good that when he stands before the angels, he will be able to say that he became who he was supposed to be.

Here’s another way of looking at this issue of authenticity. A 94-year-old friend of mine says that as people age, they become more who they already are. She has always been a loving and generous person, and as she ages those qualities shine ever more brightly. I think of that comment sometimes as I consider the array of qualities that form my own personality–some bright and some dark. Which ones will become honed with use and which will fade as I age? And I wonder how I will answer the angels when at my death they ask who I became in my life.

How will you answer, dear readers?