Birthday ramblings
Matthew 6:27
It is my birthday.
In another year, I will be a half-century old, but not this year. This year I can still cling to the illusion that I have not yet hit midlife. Next year, not so much.
Birthdays are mileposts. When I have to drive cross-country, I play a game to pass the time. I break the trip down into fifteen mile segments. That way, a 500 mile trip does not seem so overwhelming. I am always somewhere in the midst of a fifteen mile segment, so instead of having 498 miles to go, I only have thirteen. I can handle thirteen miles. At seventy miles an hour, thirteen miles goes by in a flash. Birthdays are like that. I only have to live one year at a time. I do not need to think about how many years are left. I can ruminate on how many years have passed if I want to, but for the moment, I am somewhere near a birthday. It is either just passed or coming. All I have to focus on are the set of months near at hand. That is enough. Trying to get one's mind around the whole blessed scope of one's life is devastating--so much happens, so much is said, so much slips by before anyone could do much with it, so much is said and done that we might wish not to be there, and on the whole scope flows. All I need be concerned with is what is happening right now. That's enough.
Does that seem odd?
Maybe. Maybe it is a really odd way of viewing one's life.
For me, though, it keeps things in perspective.
If I really considered the past fifty years, it has flown by. My children have blossomed into adults in a heartbeat. I have bid farewell to so many friends and family. So many chapters are written. They are fixed in time, written in stone--they are done. It has all blasted past like the countryside at seventy miles an hour. It does not slow down. It will not stop until I stop.
If I really considered the future, I would bang my head against the unknowable. I think I can gauge where I am and where I am going. I plan for contingencies. I assume things about my state of health and being with regard to where I will be in ten, twenty, or thirty years. But what do I know? What do I REALLY know about any of it? When I awoke this morning I sort of knew what I was going to do and where I would be, and for the most part, it has played out, but not exactly as I thought. Lunch happened somewhere else. I momentarily lost my wallet, which eradicated a careful plan for an hour or so. Alison's computer was fixed, then broken, then fixed again, throwing off the plan for another thirty minutes or so. If I cannot control even a single day, how can I delude myself that years are under my sway? Did my parents know that at eighty they would be in assisted living? I know they assumed otherwise--even as late as three months ago. No, the future is a great blank wall.
So, I live in this moment. This birthday is enough.
In this moment, all is as it should be.
There is God; there is love; it is all well.
It is my birthday.
In another year, I will be a half-century old, but not this year. This year I can still cling to the illusion that I have not yet hit midlife. Next year, not so much.
Birthdays are mileposts. When I have to drive cross-country, I play a game to pass the time. I break the trip down into fifteen mile segments. That way, a 500 mile trip does not seem so overwhelming. I am always somewhere in the midst of a fifteen mile segment, so instead of having 498 miles to go, I only have thirteen. I can handle thirteen miles. At seventy miles an hour, thirteen miles goes by in a flash. Birthdays are like that. I only have to live one year at a time. I do not need to think about how many years are left. I can ruminate on how many years have passed if I want to, but for the moment, I am somewhere near a birthday. It is either just passed or coming. All I have to focus on are the set of months near at hand. That is enough. Trying to get one's mind around the whole blessed scope of one's life is devastating--so much happens, so much is said, so much slips by before anyone could do much with it, so much is said and done that we might wish not to be there, and on the whole scope flows. All I need be concerned with is what is happening right now. That's enough.
Does that seem odd?
Maybe. Maybe it is a really odd way of viewing one's life.
For me, though, it keeps things in perspective.
If I really considered the past fifty years, it has flown by. My children have blossomed into adults in a heartbeat. I have bid farewell to so many friends and family. So many chapters are written. They are fixed in time, written in stone--they are done. It has all blasted past like the countryside at seventy miles an hour. It does not slow down. It will not stop until I stop.
If I really considered the future, I would bang my head against the unknowable. I think I can gauge where I am and where I am going. I plan for contingencies. I assume things about my state of health and being with regard to where I will be in ten, twenty, or thirty years. But what do I know? What do I REALLY know about any of it? When I awoke this morning I sort of knew what I was going to do and where I would be, and for the most part, it has played out, but not exactly as I thought. Lunch happened somewhere else. I momentarily lost my wallet, which eradicated a careful plan for an hour or so. Alison's computer was fixed, then broken, then fixed again, throwing off the plan for another thirty minutes or so. If I cannot control even a single day, how can I delude myself that years are under my sway? Did my parents know that at eighty they would be in assisted living? I know they assumed otherwise--even as late as three months ago. No, the future is a great blank wall.
So, I live in this moment. This birthday is enough.
In this moment, all is as it should be.
There is God; there is love; it is all well.
Comments
Post a Comment