Sara Heesen is one of my favorite people on the planet. She totally gets that all of us are going to switch off someday. And if you live long you will certainly spend the last few years of your life physically weaker than you were in your youth and you won’t be able to meet physical challenges as well. It’s true. An aphorism for her: Live as if when you are dead, you will be dead for a long time. She understands how much of a waste of time it is to be worrying about what other people will think of her if she does one thing or another. The sage says that you would be less concerned about what others think of you if you realized how rarely they do. She also knows that not failing very often means that you aren’t trying very hard. She’s all in doing things that are important to her.
She told me once that she felt liberated or even more liberated than she is when she realized that when she dies people will soon forget about her and go on with their lives. (I disagree with her use of the word “soon” in that statement.) . She said that means they won’t remember the times she fell on her face trying to do something a little beyond what she was able to do on that day. Sara is the embodiment of the Japanese saying, “Fall down seven times, stand up eight times.”
One of my prejudices is that if you are really happy all of the time you can’t be very smart and she always seems to be smiling. However it has been my good fortune to know her well enough to know that she is a smart, complex, vital, and responsive to what is going on around and within her, good and bad. I have seen her in doubt and unhappy. In my opinion, much of her internal struggle proceeds from not knowing what a splendid human being she is.
I haven’t mentioned her integrity, her courage, and her kindness, but I stop here.
