Lessons from a good Buddy

Dr. Cecil Clements
Duration: 11:04 (Compressed for the Internet)

I want to share something that happened in my life about a month ago. I lost a friend, I lost a good buddy. Buddy was our pet boxer. I remember going to Jet Airways cargo 5 years ago and picking him up as he came off the flight from Bangalore. He was in a little basket and was the size of my palm. He grew from there into a solid 40 pounder boxer, all muscle. I remember through the 5 years, we just grew to love him. My morning ritual involved waking up, getting a cup of coffee and sitting by myself, being absorbed in my thoughts, slowly waking up. Buddy would crawl into my lap, all 40 lb of him, and insist that he got my attention before the coffee. This was the ritual every morning. I would have to pet him, pull his ears, till finally he would get up and go away. That was all he needed from me until I came back in the evening. Then he would run circles around me, go and pick up something and bring it back in his mouth to me; it was like he hadn’t seen me in a year. Those were endearing things that we cherished about him.



2 months ago he began to have some discomfort and we found that he had a problem with his liver. Over a month of moving from vet to vet and finally going into the veterinary hospital where we tried everything but couldn’t save him, he passed away. It’s left such a void in our hearts, in our family. While we grieve for him, we thought to ourselves, we just loved him so much. We gave so much of ourselves as he gave to us. So many people ask us whether it was worth it – whether the grief was worth the relationship we had with him.

I thought to myself that while it’s been difficult, and it has been a difficult month for me, coming home, seeing things that reminded me of him and him not being there. Yet I wouldn’t trade the 5 years that we had with him for anything. It was a beautiful 5 years, a time in which he wove himself into our lives and gave us so much joy. However painful the parting was, I thought to myself, I would have him again.

As I came to that realization I thought: that’s just the way life is. Sometimes we go through situations and we wonder if it is worth being passionate about something. Is it worth loving something or someone because at some point we may lose it or that person and then the pain of parting becomes so deep? It is proportionate to how much you love and care for somebody. I think in the final analysis, that is the way we are made, to give ourselves into situations, to be passionate about something.

Yes, there are things that we can draw from an analogy like that. For me, 3 things came to mind.

1. To be able to learn from the lessons of those 5 years. What could I have done better? The things that remind me so much and give me so much joy, the ability to reminisce and have good memories, all of those are precious things that I can bring into the present.
2. Not to try and re-create the present with the past. And sometimes that is what we do. We want to bring what is in the past into the present. Thereby we mar the ability to shape the present and to make a beautiful future.
3. A reminder to make the most of the relationships that we have because they won’t last forever. But while we have them, enjoy them and live it to the fullest.

These 3 principles can transfer into any walk of life. And particularly for us on this audio bridge, to each one of you at different levels in the corporate world, we have the ability to enter into the functions that we have, to embrace them, to be passionate about them, or to just be superficial with them. To think that “I may be in this place for 2 or 3 years and then move on. I’m not going to do things where I set down roots. I’m not going to be too passionate about them, not going to invest in relationships.” Yet I think that is what we are meant to do, to bloom where we are planted.

I don’t know about you, but for me that makes sense. To be able to pour myself into the things that I am doing. As we do that, then we find the fruit of our labor. Then we find joy, peace, contentment, the exhilaration of doing something well. But the average, the mediocre, the superficial can never be satisfying. And anything that does not satisfy us does not help us fulfill the potential that we have.

So my question to you this morning on this call is; “Are you passionate about the things you are doing, the work you are doing, the relationships around you? Are you investing in them? Are you doing things to your fullest ability?

Sometimes I liken our lives to a swimming pool. We jump into the pool and then we tread water holding on to the sides of the pool, not sure whether we really want to get into the deep end. We think to ourselves, I’m swimming, I’m in the pool. But the excitement in being able to really utilize that swimming pool, to be able to dive in at 15 feet, to be able to go down, to be able to look at the surface of the water from beneath, to be able to swim across the length and breadth, that’s the beauty of a pool. And that’s what we need to be able to do – to let go of the sides of the pool and head out into the deep. To live well, to live deeply and passionately.

Somebody once said, “A ship may be safe in the harbor, but that’s not why it was built.” It was never built to sit in the harbor. It was built to sail on the seas, to face the storms, to ride the crest of powerful waves. It comes back into the harbor for maintenance and repairs, but that’s not where it stays.

I wonder whether you are sitting in harbor when you should be out in the deep. I wonder whether you are treading water at the side of the pool when you should be out at 16 feet. I think for us this morning, that’s the challenge. Wherever we are, are we living life to the fullest? Are we passionate about the things that we do?

In the Bible, in a book called Ecclesiastes, 9:10a, it says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”

That’s my prayer for you this morning, that wherever you are, where God has planted you, you will bloom and come to full potential. Life is worth being passionate about.

God Bless You All.