Do you ever read something or hear something that later keeps popping back up in your mind over and over again? Nagging you until you pay attention to it? Until you are ready to really think about it and how it may apply to your life? If so, then you can relate to the feeling of amazement when you realize that what you need to hear, an answer to some question, has been laid right in front of you.

Nagging Thought for Today: “It has to be given away in order to be kept.”

I don’t know if that is exactly the statement, but that is what stuck. And the levels at which it resonates in my life are profound. Love. Knowledge. Service. Self. Patience. Understanding. Hope. Comfort. Joy. Forgiveness. The list is endless. But, I realize now, it is how we apply it on a daily basis, in the small, little actions that we take, that make a difference.

My favorite gym class, Drenched, at Body Theory in North Hollywood is brutally, wonderfully hard. The music tempo is sped up, the moves engage both your upper and lower body simultaneously, and Irene and Michael Blanks push you to the brink. I keep going back to this class, to this environment, because of the type of person it draws. This morning, for example, I was suffering. It has been a while since I had attended a class and I felt weak, like I just couldn’t do it. But when I started to wane, when my body, my mind, and my heart just were not in it any more, the woman in front of me, whom I had never met, stood next to me, encouraged me to push through it, and pulled me back into the game with her own energy.

“Why?” You might ask, “Was she an instructor?” Nope. Just another human, feeding their body and soul by giving away their energy to someone who needed it. And it worked. It brought me back, and I was able to continue, to finish strong, and to give my own renewed energy away – back to her, to the class, to the moment.

Literally drenched and re-energized on the way home, I listened on the phone as a friend told me of a conversation she had had with a suicidal young man. He told her that at the last minute, after calling in to work to say he was not going to be there the next day, he could hear her voice inside his head, asking him to focus on three things he had to be grateful for and three wins he had experienced recently. By doing so, he told her, he was able to pull himself out from the depths of despair, and continue on for another day. She shared this with me, she said, because at one point, in the midst of a personal crisis of her own, I had pointed out her wins and that which she had to be grateful for and guided her in learning how to do that for herself.

“Isn’t that amazing,” she said. “You gave that to me, and I was able to give that to him. And look at how it has affected our lives.” With that, she in turn gave back to me at a time when I desperately needed it…when I needed to be reminded that in order to keep something we must give it away.

Thank you to all who have given to me, known and unknown.