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Music of the Heart – To Myself Ten Years in the Future
Fiona Sit once sang a song called “To Myself Ten Years in the Future”. Do you have plans ten years into the future? It is important to regularly reflect on your life. St. Ignatius once practiced a 5-step Daily Examen: (1) Become aware of God’s presence, (2) Review the day with gratitude, (3) Pay attention to your emotions, (4) Choose one feature of the day and pray from it, and (5) Look toward tomorrow. Zengzi once said “Self-reflect thrice a day, were you diligent in work, trustworthy with friends, thorough in learning?” Ten years is too long to reflect, we should reflect daily so we don’t procrastinate. There is a difference between happiness and joy – we can buy the former but not the latter. When we truly have joy in our hearts, no external events can take it away.
Encounter with the Word will talk about chapters 13 to 14 of the Second Book of Samuel in the Old Testament.
As a child, St. John Bosco once found a nest occupied by a mother nightingale and her chicks. He observed them for many days, waiting for the chicks to grow feathers so he could raise them as pets. One day, a cuckoo suddenly killed the whole nest of nightingales, and laid its own egg inside, only to be torn apart by a cat soon afterwards. The father nightingale returned to the nest and, thinking the cuckoo egg to be its own, proceeded to incubate it. The chick that came out was visibly not a nightingale but the father nightingale still loved it like its own chick. When it grew feathers, John Bosco caught it and placed it in his cage. The bird gave much joy to the boy and his family until John Bosco forgot to feed it for two days. He rushed to the cage, but it was too late. In its desperation to find food, the cuckoo had tried to escape the cage but trapped its neck in the birdcage and suffocated to death. His mother Margherita used this opportunity to teach John Bosco an important life lesson: a tragic ending awaits those who inherit unjustly-obtained inheritance; he ought to imitate his father, who was an upright man and justly earned every bit of the inheritance he passed on.
