On Friday night Andrew and I watched the top twenty of the Top 200 Icons of All Time on VH1. Neither one of us accurately guessed that Oprah would be hailed as number one. I was expecting it to be the "Material Girl" and Andrew anticipated it to be "The King." The next day I turned on the television and it was still stuck on the same channel. I caught some of the previous parts of the countdown that we had missed. Eventually, they arrived on number 152 and it was introduced with the words "Thanks for the memories" across the screen. Those words were, of course, referring to entertainer Bob Hope. The way his life and achievements were portrayed it seemed to infer, to me at the very least, that he was already dead. For that reason I was surprised when I heard he had died only yesterday. It just seemed so natural and easy to accept that he was already gone. I'm not sure if his appearance in the countdown in some way foreshadowed his demise to the rest of the world, but it did in some way for me.
I wouldn't call myself a deeply religious person, but I'm not completely devoid of religion either. It took me a long time to arrive here on this middle ground. I have come to understand everything in the universe to be in some way interconnected. I envision this as a net stretched out across a darkened sky. Events that occur on any part of the net are in no way isolated; they are felt all over as everything is also interdependent. Sometimes it is even possible to see a pattern emerge. When big things are about to happen the entire universe announces that they are coming and we, in some way, are forewarned. Sometimes one is too busy going along with the Tao, or the flow, to apply any sense to it all; to find the source of the pattern. Sometimes we don't even know that we're to be looking for one. When we are actually able to locate the source, it becomes a whole lot easier to deal with it in the end.
-- CrystalShiloh @ 08:00 PM