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“You were born with the gift of rain. Your life will be abundant with wealth and success. But life will test you greatly. Remember—the rain also brings the flood.”
Who can look back and truly say all his memories are happy ones? To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation. Do you not agree?”
“Have you ever met someone who is so close to you, so right, that nothing else matters? Somebody who, without being told, knows each and every aspect of you?”
The secret behind his power, Ueshiba often told his students, was based on love, love for everyone, for the universe, even for the one who was about to kill you. For love was a power of the universe, and with the universe behind you, who could defeat you?
That was one of the greatest gifts Endo-san had given me—the ability to love and to recognize being loved.
And I realized then that there was an emotion worse even than the sharpest fear; it was the dull feeling of hopelessness, the inability to do anything.
The fortune-teller, long since dead, had said I was born with the gift of rain. I know now what she meant. Her words had not been a curse; nor had they been words of blessing. Like the rain, I had brought tragedy into many people’s lives but, more often than not, rain also brings relief, clarity, and renewal. It washes away our pain and prepares us for another day, and even another life. Now that I am old I find that the rains follow me and give me comfort, like the spirits of all the people I have ever known and loved.
