A month ago, I woke up to a Facebook message that was so unexpected.
“Thank you for your message to my sister … I am Masako's sister. My name is Satoko. My sister died on July 5th. My sister died in the hospital (in Nagoya Japan). She died of illness. I do not speak English. I use Web Translate to write. Are you a friend of my sister?”
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We are just a tiny insignificant spark of existence in the history of this planet.
Our mother earth has been here way before we have arrived as a human species. And she will still be here, way after we are gone.
The ocean rises every day. The tide goes up and down.
The sun always comes out. Even if we can’t see it on some days. It is always there.
There is an old Chinese saying: You came naked to this world and you will leave naked.
Whatever you have in between these two naked moments, is your life.
And how you live it, is entirely your CHOICE.
If we understand that we are going to die anyway and that is completely out of our control, we might as well enjoy it, right?
When I'm ready to leave this earth, what really matters are the memories that I leave behind. Just like the memories that Masoko left to me and the world.
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From strangers to sisters, Masako and I spent a whole year traveling together: Africa, Fiji, Canada, Hawaii. We learned from Tony Robbins as platinum partners. That was at the beginning of my awakening journey when I started to open up and let others enter my heart.
After our platinum year, despite being oceans apart, the deep knowing of such a soul's existence has been a great comfort to me.
Masako lived in Tokyo, the only platinum partner from Japan back then, eight years ago. There were 105 platinum partners on the trip.
Never allowing language barriers to stop her, she was always playing full out.
Masako worked as a dentist, but her true passion was healing. When I close my eyes, I can still feel the pure angelic energy that poured through her hands onto my crown chakra.
No one knew that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer back then. She kept it very quiet. People were attracted to her for her sweet smile and soft beautiful energy.
Once Masako told me that people back home sometimes didn’t understand her. Energy seeks its own kind and she found a home in the Tony Robbins’ platinum family. Like myself, she was drawn to it; the secret of living is giving.
And she lived to be an example of that.
Thinking about her brought back beautiful memories of our Fiji trip together. Tony was teaching us Business Mastery Level 2 and we were asked to form teams to raise funds for the Fijian locals using the principles that we were learning.
On the first day of our team formation, there were seven people in our team. Surprisingly, the next morning, the elected team leader and three others didn’t show up to the early morning meeting.
Not waiting around, Masako, myself, and another plat brother, Praveen, decided to play the game with full commitment, starting with creating our slogan “Loloma, we give love!”
After interviewing some locals, we discovered that village kids often go to school in the pouring rain, which is very common in the region.
The initial goal was to raise $500 to buy raincoats for the children in the entire village. Four days later, we raised over $8,000!!!
Often you can tell how a person is by how he/she plays the game. The more you put in, the more you get out of it.
Masako played full out. She volunteered to be the accountant to keep track of all the donations we collected. I was touched by how she worked tirelessly to keep all the cash organized -- US dollars, Canadian dollars, Australia dollars, English pounds, euros, francs, etc. We had brothers and sisters from around the world on this trip.
We petitioned for our hotel staff to take us shopping in the closest town about an hour away. There were only two small stores that carried school supplies. We bought all the raincoats, school backpacks, supplies for less than $2,000.
As for the remaining $6,000+, a fund was set up for an annual attendance to Tony Robbins’s Global Youth Leadership program in the USA. A year later, I received a heartwarming report of the first boy who was elected to go. Just like his father and his father’s father, this 16-year-old had never left his tiny village on the island. But now the world is changing. With the skills that he learned and friends that he made, he came back as a stronger leader to lead his people.
Eight months ago, I set up Athena Sisterhood’s Facebook group “BE THE LIGHT” and invited Masako to join and she responded warmly right away.
Together, we recalled how people in Fiji had touched our hearts. Fijians had very little material possessions, but everyone we encountered had a big smile on their face. “Bula Bula” is how they say hello. They would stop what they were doing in the field and wave to cars passing by and shouting “Bula Bula” with so much joy and pride.
Fast-forward to November 2020, we are still in the shadow of a pandemic. I understand that our world will never go back to the pre-pandemic “normal” again. Never before have we lived in such physical separation. But even before the pandemic, many people were living in separation spiritually.
Yet every one of us can be so connected if we choose to. Just like Masako, me, and the Fijians, even though we never met before, it felt as though we were kindred souls.
How is a memory created?
Memories are formed when we are living in the present moment with intense emotions.
Only those moments are truly lived, are they not?
These memories would be the moments where I have truly lived: painful moments, grateful moments, funny moments, fast heart-beating moments, shy moments, romantic moments, passionate moments, naughty moments, boundary-testing moments, scary moments, risky moments… the list can go on and on.
On my last breath, I wish to smile and recall many of these moments that made this earthly trip worthwhile, like what I'm doing now while celebrating Masako’s beautiful Fijian moments.
Love you, beautiful sister. No matter where you are now Masako, Bula Bula to you.
Love,
WeiLi