Angels — the human kind — are like heroes: all around us, if you know where to look.
There’s a line in a book by Terry Pratchett* that best sums up part of the working definition of an angel, and (taken out of context), it goes something like this: anyone could have done it. Nobody did.
There may come a time in our lives, when we need help and we don’t know where to turn. And one person helps us. Just one. When we’d almost given up hope.
That’s it. That’s an angel. Someone who helps us when no one else will. Someone who’s there for us when it matters.
And, in a way, we make our own angels, or they make themselves, by being a presence in our lives. And they often appear in a form which surprises us and, often, when we least expect it.
Sans the white robes, the swans’ wings, and the halos, angels are just (“just”) regular human beings like you and me, who do something special: they’re there when we need them, they help us up again when we fall down, they give us what we need to carry on.
And it takes meeting an angel, sometimes, to appreciate the nature of a true gift. Whether that be friendship, or a helping hand, or someone who cares – or just life and being human.
These are the people who teach us what it means to give of ourselves — in fact, many of us only discover our own individual angels by being inspired to try to help them.
And then we see something, something we can’t quite describe, a gleam in their eyes, a look, a vivid impression of something beneath and beyond the outward frame – something that hints of harp strings and heartstrings (and plays upon both): a light, a sparkle, something beautiful, and intensely human.
An angel, a genuine, real-life — although maybe not-so-everyday — angel, has to be seen to be believed. But once you’ve seen, you can’t help but believe. That’s the beauty of an angel — who is a human being, nothing more, nothing less, but still, something more …
And, as Terry Pratchett reminds** us, one of the things about angels (sometimes) is ‘that you only ever get one‘.
An angel is the one we’re grateful to (who helps us when we fall),
For friendship true, for caring, and for being there at all.
Here’s to the angels in our lives, who as we get to know them, and grow to care about them, become dearer to us than we could ever know at the moment of meeting them: they are our heroes, our guiding lights, our friends.
*: ‘Going Postal’, by Terry Pratchett. Give it a try. Really. Don’t let the title put you off — you won’t be disappointed. (Or, at least, it’s highly unlikely.)
**: Great writers never die. They live on in their stories. (In some ways, curiously appropriate, given the book in question.)