- Be - If those you loved loved walks in the forest, then walk in the forest and internalize their experience. Who knows, someone may do the same for you.
- Act - If they were generous with others, emulate them. Make your actions reflect the best of theirs.
- Share - If they valued honesty, share and talk about the importance of honesty. Through conversation (online and off) reinforce what was important to them.
- Inquire - If particular ideas were important to them, embrace and develop those ideas in some way. You don’t even have to agree with them to learn something from them.
- Create - Create or commission art that celebrates their values and then share it with others. Art can spread and touch those who connect with it on a fundamental level.
5 Gift Ideas for the Dead In Your Life
Do you ever wish you could give a gift to those you have lost? It might seem impossible, but it is probably something that you already do every day.
There is a beautiful concept in the Torah/Bible that G-d gathers souls. But when the Torah/Bible describes a crop being gathered, it specifically instructs that the gleanings are to be left behind. They are there to support the stranger and the widow and the orphan.
The same concepts exists with our souls. When we are gathered up, gleanings remain. Contrary to popular imagination, these gleanings aren’t memories or biographies. Instead they are the unique and almost undefinable goodness that lives within each of us and can, in turn, be planted and cultivated within our families and communities.
To take just one example, imagine a mother who hugs her kids every morning and leaves them with a feeling of value and importance that lasts the entire day. When those same children grow up and pass on that tradition to their own children - generation after generation - that mother’s goodness will be woven into forever. Even if she only did because her own mother did, she has become a part of a chain of eternity.
So how do you give a gift to the deceased? You weave their goodness into your world. You make it something that survives far longer than even memory itself.
How? It is actually quite BASIC:
Each of these techniques represent a different way to give to those we have lost. Every one of them enhances the gleanings that have been left behind for us, and for those who survive us.
How can you implement these ideas in your life? Through being, acting, sharing and inquiring you can make the goodness of the deceased a part of your daily life.
However, for special occasions, such as birthdays or anniversaries or memorial days, do something truly unique: create.
You might do it yourself, through painting or sculpture or writing. But you can also commission others to use their artistic talents and insights to celebrate the goodness of those you love. For example, Stories that Celebrate interviews people and creates custom stories designed to celebrate the values of those they love.
Memories are important but it is goodness, cultivated generation after generation, that can make those we love a part of tomorrow.
If you’d like help coming up with your own ways of being, acting, sharing, inquiring and creating don’t hesitate to reach out to me at joseph@storiesthatcelebrate.com