Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Monday, November 24, 2003

A Full Life

Somewhere along the way I developed a few ideas of how life was supposed to be lived. I'm not sure exactly where these ideas came from but I have a feeling it was from plays like "Our Town" and "Death of a Salesman", movies such as "Dead Poets Society" and biographies too numerous to mention. Central to my conception of how life is to be lived is that it is to be lived fully and actively. No sitting on the couch and watching how other people may or may not live their lives; to have a life, you must live it. To truly live life you must appreciate each moment for what it holds and not keep looking forward to the future to find happiness or to the past to remember it. Life happens in the now. We should plan for the future and we should learn the lessons the past teaches us but the living happens in the moment.

Anyone who knows me knows that this is how I live. I don't watch much TV aside from sporting events, I don't waste my time or money on movies with old, used up story lines or uninspired acting and I don't read fiction at all. Why watch people act when I can do it myself? Why read about made up stories when I can write the story of my own life? This isn't to say that a person can't profit from these things but I just see way too much to do to not be deeply and heavily involved in the business of living each and every moment of my own life. The major frustration I have in life is that I can't do more sometimes. There are opportunities that I'd like to seize that I don't have time for. There are things that I'd like to explore that will cause me to neglect the priorities and commitments that I've already made.

The other day though, I had an interesting revelation. Somewhere along the line I also picked up the idea that if I live a full life, time would slow down. That somehow life wouldn't feel like it was slipping by so quickly. I'm learning that this particular pre-conception of life is wrong. The time still goes by quickly. What the poets and prophets and wise men are trying to say isn't, "If you lead a full life, time will slow down and you'll have more life to enjoy," but, instead they are really saying is, "The days pass quickly, whether no matter how you live them. Don't waste what time you have on foolishness. Time is a currency evenly measured out to all with no regard to rank or status or situation. It can not be saved or hoarded or increased; only spent wisely." I think that the point of all the wisdom I received was to tell me that each moment should be treasured as if it were one of the last you might be granted. With that in mind, what really has value in a person's life?

For me it is the time spent in my wife's arms, the instantaneous eternity of communing with my God and Savior, the moments considering a truly new and startling idea, the almost timeless effort of pedaling a bicycle, the legacy of loving others, the youth of laughter, the perseverence of friendships, the undying beauty of the heavens and the Earth. When examined in this sort of light, so much seems like such a waste. Bad TV, movies and books, arguing with anyone and with small people with little ideas especially, hatred and bigotry, taunting and trash-talking, drunkeness and dissipation, lust and the sex it leads to, the pursuit of power, gain and wealth for its own sake only, little gods with mundane power or impersonal gods with big power, art that destroys or degrades, psudoscience and mumbo-jumbo, snake-oil poppycock.

I want to live life fully, unabashedly, abundantly. I want to do that now. I don't want to wait until tomorrow and I don't want to rest on the remeberance of yesterday. I may not be here tomorrow and I can't really relive the past but what I have is now. I will live now with the knowledge and wisdom the past has given me and the understanding that if I am given the gift of tomorrow I will need to be prepared to live it fully as well.

Thanks to Jeff Weiss for writing a play that so eloquently reminded me of this and to the cast and crew of A Christmas Carol; Kathy, Jeff, Colby, Ryan, Rafael, Joe, Brian, Cario, Kim, Dianna, Summer, Tiffany, Mickey, Kelly, Virginia, Ian, Erin, Aaron, Diana and all the rest, here at Gordon College, for bringing it to life.

God Bless Us, Every One!

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