As we travel through life, we do things that we are both very proud of and very dispairing (or ashamed) of. If we have a belief system that says that there is no higher purpose, or higher heaven, or God, then who witnesses one's life? A witness is someone who is an eye witness to your actions, deeds, and may even be privy to your thoughts. Many of us have our parents and siblings as witnesses for the first part of our life. However, as each of us travels our own way, we may lose touch with the family. Or, they may be too far away to be of any value as a witness to our life.

Who then, stands and watches? It may be your spouse. In fact for many of us, it is our spouse. And, that is a wonderful gift! It truly is a miracle of love to have someone marry you, love you, and stand by you for all time through all the good times and bad times, especially for forty or fifty years. Long marriages, however, are not the norm. Spouses, partners, or whatever name you would like to call them have a short time span as a witness. To be quite blunt, they simply either cannot put up with witnessing the spouse/partner's life. Or, perhaps it is that they do not like having their life witnessed.

The question then becomes - if no one witnessed an action, did it really happen? This question is not meant to exonerate criminals from criminal activity for the physical evidence will support that a crime happened. What the question means is that if no one saw the action, was the action really as great or as horrific as we remember it? The events that happen to us in the past quite often become exaggerated by our minds/egos. Having a witness tends to reinforce a more objective view of the action.

The other part of having a witness is that if one does something extremely kind and wonderful, then someone needs to tell others about it. If we take an example that we are all familiar with - Princess Diana - we can then ask, "Would people have taken her so into their hearts if a witness - in this case the Media - had not told everyone of the marvelously compassionate actions that she did, even in the face of her personal tragedy?

We will judge somone as "ordinary" when they may be a super hero, just because we do not have a witness to tell us about the heroic actions. We all have fallen for the self proclaimer who says, " I did this, and I did that..."

We call it "Tooting Your Own Horn". The more someone toots, the less likely we are to believe them.

And yet, what wonderful lives some people lead! They over come great obstacles and personal tragedies. How can we know about them if there is no witness? And, if there is no witness, why do people bother to continue to be kind, brave, and do selfless acts? It would seem, regardless of whether they know someone is watching, they behave as though someone is watching. They behave as they would like to see someone behave in a movie.

Perhaps then, the person becomes their own witness by the type of life that they lead, and by the faith that they have. And perhaps somehow, they know, that someone has observed every action. And that knowledge makes it all perfect and comfortable.

Blessings,

Judy