Life is long.
That’s not a typo. Yes, I really did mean long — not short like you hear so many people say.
For most of us, when you add up all the experiences, the opportunities, the minutes, the seconds and the hours, a life is a lot longer than you probably ever imagined it would or could be.
I thought about that earlier this year while celebrating my grandmother’s 100th birthday and then again on my own 40th birthday last week.
Think about all the things my grandmother experienced and lived to talk about: two World Wars, the Great Depression, the dawn of the age of the automobile and the airplane, movies, TV, the Cold War, and the end of the Cold War.
Even more meaningful to her, I’m sure, was the litany of personal experiences. The miracle of marriage and children was soon followed by the tragedy of divorce and abandonment, poverty, then overcoming that tragedy and finding happiness and prosperity once again.
I have been through enough of my own trials, tribulations, agonies and ecstasies in my life, too. Most of us have. In fact, nowadays with life expectancy as high as it is — if we stay away from the really bad stuff like drugs, excessive drinking and smoking — with a little luck we all probably not only will have a long life, we will have two or three of them.
What I mean is we have time to do so many things, to love so many people and to enjoy so much that God has given us.
All that time, yet are we so afraid of losing it in the blink of an eye that we go rushing through it sometimes, desperate to get to the next thing, or to get this thing done before it’s too late? That can mean missing out on the simple value of the times at hand.
Time well spent
All good things take time. Like diamonds and vintage wine, we need to put the time into our lives before they, too, reach their full value and return that tenfold in ways we probably never could imagine.
I thought about that recently while pondering Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
My parents gave me so much as I was growing up. They fed me, clothed me, sheltered me and provided me with a great education, all blessings that I certainly appreciated and would have definitely noticed being without.
But what I remember most was the time. Time they spent with me, without any promise of any other particular return for them or me, time that barely crept by because we weren’t really doing anything but being there together, spending time.
Whether it was my mother holding me and rocking me back and forth on her knee as an infant, or my father coming into my room and sitting by my bedside and reading the newspaper to me when I was sick — for those brief moments, time seemed to stand still. What better way to keep from losing it.
The funny thing is that it’s not till you get a little older and have a little less time, that you actually learn to linger, no longer afraid to let the time slip away, as long as you are doing something you enjoy with someone you care about.
As I look back, I wish I had spent a little more time with some of the people in my life, just doing nothing. I am glad that my mom and dad are still here to give me that opportunity with them.
And I am especially glad that as I embark on what I consider my second life, I have learned not to waste time trying too hard to make more of it, or to ruin the time I do have lamenting over not having enough of it. Instead I am going to spend it with the people I love.
Then when I die, I can say I lived a long, long life.
“Don’t lose hope,” said the waitress to one of the regulars at a little Irish pub I frequent.
She had just poured her heart out about losing her job. The property management company she worked for lost its shirt in the current real estate crisis and she got laid off.
“Keep the faith,” I muttered as she walked past.
The 30-something single mother of two smiled and thanked me for my concern and kindness.
But what did I really do? Can such platitudes offer any meaningful comfort or direction when we are at the end of our rope? What can? Now is a good time to ask.
Unemployment is up. Most economists say this is cyclical, and it’s no worse than we see every 10 or 20 years, yet they admit we are probably headed toward a recession — no need telling that to the woman who lost her job.
Foreclosures are out of control. Some say it’s only those who bit off more than they could chew who are out on a limb. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t really make me feel much better.
Oil and gas prices are through the roof. Everywhere you look nowadays the papers are filled with stories of people struggling to make ends meet, and as always most of the media will do whatever they can to sensationalize these tough times.
So what do we all do about it? Don’t lose hope and keep the faith? But what does that actually mean?
Well maybe hope — looking forward to better times to come — makes it easier to keep going. Psychologists and common sense tell us we can endure just about anything for a limited time, as long as the end is in sight, and we know that better times lie ahead. But how do we know that good times lie ahead — and how to deal with the ones we got?
That’s where faith comes in.
Maybe hope without faith is missing the point of our lives — that there is a great value to finding some solace in the situation we are in — even the worst of them.
If you believe in what you are doing and why you are doing it, you can endure more than you ever imagined.
Tragedies won’t stop happening and problems will always be a part of life. Yet, we spend our lives either trying to escape these unavoidable experiences or reeling from their effects, waiting to be free of suffering before we allow ourselves to be happy.
But faith can help us find happiness within the experiences of our ordeals themselves and how we deal with them. Because tough times make us realize the value of our lives can’t all be measured, understood or based on our prosperity, our fortune, misfortune, or end result at all.
Our value is wrapped up in the way we live, the people, the principles and the God we live for. And in turn those are the reasons to endure the toughest times life can offer — to keep going — for all those principles and people that we love.
And we will get through. But when we do, we will have much more than our rediscovered prosperity. We will have the knowledge and know-how it took us to get there. We will have the confidence in our ability to weather tough times. Most importantly, we will know better what we value, and whom.
We will all keep working hard. Because that’s what Americans do. In fact, when the chips are down, you can’t beat our spirit, our ingenuity and our faith in each other, in ourselves and in our God to see us through.
We keep going because we know that every day, every hour, every second that we spend helping spread God’s love through our own compassion, our understanding and our endurance gets all of us one step closer to making the Lord’s Prayer a reality: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”
And I hope none of you give up on that.
