Today I had an online meeting with an Australian client of the company I work for. As I was helping them online, I heard in the background of their home familiar sounds of music. It was the soundtrack of a movie I used to love as a young girl. The title of the movie is horrible, so I won't even write it here, but the movie itself used to be a cult movie for teenage girls back then. The star of the movie is actor Patrick Swayze and his co-star is Jennifer Gray. In the movie he is a dance instructor in a summer vacation resort. Hearing the sounds of the songs from the soundtrack of this film made me nostalgic. I then replayed it on youtube and researched Patrick on google. I remember his awful end as he was fighting pancreatic cancer in his later years. A few thoughts and insights came into my mind as a result.
First, our bodies are just vessels. They allow us to work in this world, to influence others, to do good. Superstars like Patrick Swayze and his likes reach fame, because through fame they can affect and influence others on vast scales. The only question remains - would they use this for good or for bad, will they be soldiers in G-d's army, or join the ranks of those who think they can do without Him. Patrick Swayze used to be one of the most beautiful looking people on this planet. He looked like a Greek god of some sort. Still, he had this air about him that he didn't take his beauty too seriously. At a very young age he married his sweetheart and they were married for decades until his death. Others in his position tend to go out with a different model every day of their lives until they reach old age. He didn't. He stayed married to his sweetheart and didn't date other women. I saw interviews with him. Gorgeous as he was, physically, he was a very simple man inside, not a super-intellectual, not a super-spiritual person. Just a sweet, simple man with good intentions. He tried to fight cancer through the regular means - chemotherapy and the like, and I think it was this treatment that killed him faster than the cancer would have. He died relatively young, and his last year/s of his life taught the world that this body of ours is so temporary, and beauty tends to fade even for the most beautiful people on this earth. What matters is the personality, the mind, and the good deeds that the person has done in his life. In his last year of life he looked like a pale shadow of himself - but he himself remained who he was even when he looked so different, and his spouse was helping him until he took his last breath. She loved him not for his beauty, but for who he was, for his soul.
Second, most people do not stay faithful to a dead spouse. I read a bit about his spouse, and found out that she remarried. It was a shock to me. How could she marry anyone else after sharing such a strong love with him? How can the heart do it? To me, it was as if she betrayed him, it came to me like a punch in the stomach. I don't say it's immoral to remarry, of course that's absolutely not true. I just wonder how she found room in her heart to love somebody else. If you truly love someone, you can't marry someone else, no matter how many years have passed since they left you. I know people who feel the same way like me about this - who have stayed faithful to someone they loved even decades after their loved one was gone, or gone from their lives.
Third, with all the money and fame that he had, he was an avid searcher for a spiritual connection. He was not religious, but he was looking for G-d in his own way. It just means that all the transient, physical aspects of this world that everybody is craving so much - are really not enough to fill the cravings of the soul. In the scroll of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon (Kohelet) said - I have had it all, all the luxuries of this life, but it is all Havel Havalim. It is worth nothing and it fades away like vapor. The word Hevel means nonsense, something inconsequential. But it also means the vapors that come out of our mouths when we breathe or speak on a very cold day. It seems tangible for a fleeting moment, but then it is gone. So are all the physical aspects of this world, of this life. The only thing worth investing our time and energy in are things that nourish our souls. I feel like G-d used him as an example, to teach these truths. His disease was not necessarily a punishment for him. Instead, it was just a lesson to the world. He had to be famous and gorgeous so that everybody would know that the body is just a body. It is Hevel. And so are all the other physical things in this world.
Thank you, Patrick Swayze, for these lessons, may your soul rest in peace.