As many of her friends have remarked, it's hard to believe it's been a year since Anoopa's car accident. Today I feel as though she has taught me as much or more after her death than during the time I knew her. I still read the comments people leave on her website and am deeply touched by every single one. It continues to amaze me the effect she had on those who knew her.
Anoopa has shown me the way that I would like to be remembered and the effect on my friends I would like to have.
To live life deeply and reflect often. To share my thoughts about life and lessons I think I may be learning with others and encourage them to share their insights with me. To share books and poems that make you think. To rise above the nitty gritty day to day and attempt to learn something bigger or deeper and then to live in line with those. I guess I always wondered if all those conversations we had in undergrad ever amounted to anything real being learned or just to more questions and discussion and time pondering. I've learned from Anoopa that they were indeed the most valuable conversations I've had and the amazing impact she had having the same type of conversations with so many others either in person or in writing.
It seems to me that each friend I have brings out certain qualities/characteristics in me (and
me in them) and it's like the beginning is this phase where you're
still settling on what kinds of conversations and what sides of the
two people will come out and its usually just an unconscious process I
think. It's like each person is a prism refracting out certain colors
of a rainbow. Usually it's so dependent on the initial circumstances
when you meet or where the common ground is perhaps. While I
definitely always appreciate being silly and chatting about day to day
stuff, it's neat when you can sort of dig below that because there are
always so many thoughts that flash by in any given moment about life
in general, you know, yet we select out certain ones to express to
certain people. I guess I'm thinking about it more too because grad
school is so specializing as it should be to really become
knowledgeable about a particular area, but I don't want to lose
thinking about the other aspects of life in a bigger sense or more
personal sense I guess. Modern life is so busy, it seems that I never
have time to really reflect like this on life until late at night...