I teach a class at a teaching center that belongs to a college. There is a hospice next door to this center. We share adjacent parking lots and in our building there are many messages posted to warn students not to park in the hospice parking lot, under any circumstances.

That kept me thinking. Here we are, all of us, in our daily lives, with our ups and downs, mostly happy, coming in and out of a building next to another building where people are dying. How many of us are truly aware that in the next building there are suffering, pain, despair, depression, stress, sadness, and transition going on day after day, night after night?

Sometimes I feel guilty that my students and I are having so much fun, when so close to us, others are in so much pain, physical and emotional. Of course, every time I pass through the front entrance of the hospice on my way to park my car, I make a point of saying a little prayer for those facing transition, ready to pass the threshold of this life, and hope that their passing is a peaceful one to a world of freedom from pain and suffering. I also pray that their kin are also in peace and that acceptance of death is really part of living.

How many places do we pass during our day where there is someone who is in deep despair? I remember once, my mother told me that on her way to bank she walked by a house whose occupant, minutes after she passed, shot himself. On her way from the bank, she saw the commotion and learnt of the guy