One More Day Alive

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.

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