 A Teaching from Tecumseh
A few years ago, I was handed the following saying of Tecumseh’s - I call it ‘A Teaching from Tecumseh’:
"So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."
These words help me greatly. Reflecting on them helped me heal from 10 years of Air Force service with ICBMS. In time, I was driven to write these following words in reflection of what the Teaching of Tecumseh had taught me.
Reflections of a Teaching from Tecumseh
"We have tried to live our lives so that the fear of death could never enter our hearts and we have found that by doing so we've created fertile ground for the rearing of good-minds. We have no need to trouble others about their religion, because we are no longer troubled in our own. We choose to respect others in their viewpoints and we respect everyone else's before we even consider demanding that our own point of view be respected. Oh, the struggle it has been to love our own lives, because loving ourselves is the hardest thing any of us has ever done. We will never perfect our lives, but we are perfectly content trying to do so, for we know we must. We've found that true beauty is hidden in the simple surrender of judgment. When we no longer cared about such things as beauty, every thing was beautiful; all the things in our lives. We will seek to make our lives longer and more useful, but only as long as we, ourselves are of use. The purpose of our lives are to understand all of life, humanity just happens to be first on our list of life's things to understand. We stand prepared to show human nobility in the face of our own deaths, but only we, as individuals, and nature should have a say as to when that may be. We will do more than treat a stranger as a friend, we will treat that person as a family member; for all of us are of one family, one tribe, one nation and one species on one little blue world. We will no longer forget the words humanity, humility and humaneness at the most important times. Every person is a friend, but our best friend is our self; this is the way we have banished loneliness from our world. We respect all others and never wish to be their master, nor will we allow them to make us their slaves, in fact or thought. When we respect, respect is born, then and only then will we begin to really see each other. When this has occurred then maybe we will begin to learn how to talk to each other, instead of at each other. With each dawn we arise in thanks and with each dusk we slip into sleep with thanks, for living is the only true joy. When we eat, we share with others first, because we know that the sharing of food is the only real way to show we care. We will not see the world through the eyes of spite, for those are the blindest eyes we've ever known. We can no longer abuse others, because we are now incapable of abusing ourselves. When we realized we only had one great abuser in our lives and that was our self, we began to see the world with clarity, instead of through the froth of anger. We first had to make peace with ourselves, so that we could know how to make peace with others. We are always willing to discuss any point of contention. It is always our desire to do so without our words becoming knives, that will in turn hurt others and in the end destroy ourselves. We are willing to die as a peacemakers long before we are willing to even consider killing as warriors. We will try to avoid conflict at all costs, even though this may seem next to impossible as we approach it. It is easier to love ourselves, when we know there was nothing more we should have done. We laugh at ourselves before we laugh at others, for when others see our self-deprecation they will then realize that what we have to say is not born of vanity or greed. We have no desire to ever possess the property of others, for if we do, those things will in the end possess us. We try to cooperate with others, for cooperation is never a weakness and is always a strength. We will take no credit for the abilities given us by the Great Spirit or shown to us by our mentors, to do so only feeds our egos and our egos are fat enough. We will try to remember that one friend is worth more than all the enemies in the world and each enemy lessens every friendship. We will also try to remember that it is easier to change a friend's mind than it is an enemy's. As our times of death approach be assured that we have no regrets, all we ask of you is to let us be. Just let us sing our songs of Life's Questions and stagger in enlightenment, on down the path to our new abodes."
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