?It is in­deed a tragedy to loose a tal­ent like Michael Jack­son, whose death has brought much sad­ness to many. May he rest in peace. As we re­cu­per­ate from the nat­ur­al grief process, it is im­por­tant that we fo­cus on the pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions that Jack­son has made.

As a re­sult of the pow­er­ful mes­sages he left us, it is undis­put­ed that his en­er­gy re­mains. This is es­pe­cial­ly so with re­gard to his em­pha­sis on a child-cen­tred ap­proach–re­mem­ber­ing the chil­dren in all that we do. At this point, I choose to con­scious­ly dis­re­gard the many al­le­ga­tions made against the de­ceased and tune in to the mes­sages that he de­liv­ered in the most mes­meris­ing and in­spi­ra­tional ways.

I choose to fo­cus on this as­pect of his pass­ing to raise col­lec­tive con­scious­ness in or­der that we do not lose sight of the big­ger pic­ture and al­low our­selves to be ab­sorbed in the less per­ti­nent is­sues that we are bom­bard­ed with dai­ly and can on­ly spec­u­late on.

Let us re­mem­ber the time he de­liv­ered the mes­sages that:

�2 The onus is on each of us to start mak­ing the changes we want. Start chang­ing the way we think and be­have and, as much as pos­si­ble, avoid­ing the blame game. Look at our per­son­al be­hav­iours that in­hib­it growth and work to im­prove them.

n We need to take care of our most pre­cious re­source–the chil­dren. In every­thing that we do, we need to think about the im­pact on the chil­dren de­spite sex, colour or creed. Pre­serve the en­vi­ron­ment so that they can dwell com­fort­ably and be pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens for gen­er­a­tions to come. Are we ex­pos­ing chil­dren to un­nec­es­sary risks? Are we work­ing to re­duce in­equity among our poor­er na­tions so that chil­dren can ben­e­fit from ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties like health­care and pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion?

�2 We need to put aside our dif­fer­ences and work to im­prove hu­man­i­ty. We must recog­nise our per­son­al gifts and use them in such a way that they con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to our hu­man con­di­tion.

�2 We should be char­i­ta­ble and give of our­selves un­con­di­tion­al­ly. When we suc­ceed we must share the wealth–mon­e­tary or oth­er­wise. Take time to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty, spend time with chil­dren, and ex­plore cre­ative op­por­tu­ni­ties to make a dif­fer­ence in peo­ple's lives.

�2 We are nev­er alone in our tri­als and we pos­sess in­her­ent qual­i­ties that heal and pro­mote re­silience.

So let's keep him alive by pay­ing clos­er at­ten­tion to the mes­sages he de­liv­ered so well as he spent time with us. It's time to wipe the tears and al­low the greater pow­ers that be to take charge and grant us the en­durance so that we too can in­flu­ence the world as he did. Through the work we do with chil­dren he would con­tin­ue to live through us. Deep­er un­der­stand­ing tells us that he would nev­er tru­ly die if we fos­ter this think­ing as his en­er­gy con­tin­ues to mul­ti­ply in all of us. Think about the chil­dren.

?Khadi­jah Williams-Pe­ters

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