What was it all for? I’m asking on the day I die. When at the heavenly gates, will I say, “I believed in humanity and helping from the heart,” or, “I believed in the mechanisms of the stock market.” If the latter, I worry I’ll be met with, “Okay … try again.” Like those stormtroopers in Star Wars, they all look the same, their true faces hidden under uniforms, and serving a machine. Their minds can be so easily overtaken, by a Jedi who has mastered his heart over reason. So many uniforms in this life. The body will decompose before the clothes buried with them. You can leave the uniform behind. You’re not taking it with you. Today you’re born anew. The look in your cat’s eye, or the sound of your dog’s sigh, might be the most important thing going on today. There’s life everywhere you’re not looking. We haven’t seen energies like these in over one hundred and fifty years. The last time it happened there was civil war. You can feel the storm clouds brewing. Something is coming. We’re only at the beginning. Where will you plant your feet of clay? Will you take no side, and be complicit to what anybody says? What does your heart say to do? The look in an animal’s eyes says, “I love you. It looks nice outside.” She doesn’t fear a virus in the air. She doesn’t feel her own rage surging, over words in a twitter feed. Blaming and shaming, citing constitutions and institutions. Stock market calisthenics, and dogmas expressing to a generation now thousands of years removed. What does your heart say to do? When the clothes buried with you will remain in the tomb after the body has disappeared? The masks we put on. I’m a soldier today. I’m a pacifist tomorrow. I’m a Catholic. I’m a Hebrew. To God, will it matter? The God who loves all? We like to keep our vision small. There’s too much to take in. To take in more only invites confusion. But something sees it all. The whole thing. And says it is good. It’s meant to be. Your soul chose a journey. Your mind just doesn’t know it yet. But it will, at the end. What was it all for? Did I love today? Not someone who already knows it, someone safe in her castle, but someone who was never told before and never felt it. That person most despised who committed that most despicable crime. If he had been told by a group of others – just how loved he was! And he really felt it! It’s hard to imagine the crime would have occurred. It’s hard to hate when you feel you’re loved for who you are. Flaws and all, I love you just the way you are. So much is preventable. A simple hug can wash away so much evil. In a day where hugging is not allowed. So we must resort to words. Watching people on death beds through plexiglass windows. What was it all for? Did I die for an idea? One planted in my mind? One that existed before me, and will carry on? In a world of so many traditions and cultures, did it matter which idea it was? Did I die for my mind? Oh, I hope not. I had wished to live from my heart. Oh, what went wrong along the way. Did I say I love you today. It doesn’t matter where you start. Did I laugh at my own convictions. Did I see the folly in my ways. Did I open up? Did I take my mask off, if only to say I care. What things will matter when my end is drawing near. When the only other being holding my hand is a hospice worker, and her skin color doesn’t match my own. But I can feel her love. She is all I have. What was it all for? It doesn’t matter anymore. And I close my eyes. And I feel the love. It was so buried deep inside. It’s everywhere now. Oh, Lord, I get it now. “Goodbye.” And a final breath is drawn, and a tear rolls from the eye. ❤️  

– “THERE SHE IS!!” is in e-book and paperback (search “todd demartinis” on amazon). You are loved, just the way you are.