Our Stories
All the Days of My Life
By Stew | posted 07/30/2009
"Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever." (Psalm 23:6)
I’m 55 on July 30. On that date in 1954 I was brought into an overwhelming world, but because of my mother, ultimately a comforting world. I’ve lived over 20,000 days since then. If I live to be 57 (plus an extra 14 days) that’ll get me to 500,000 hours (or 30 million minutes or 1.8 billion seconds), but who’s counting.
That’s a lot of time.
Think of people whose lives have been cut short. How fair is it really that I’ve lived 20,000 days and many others more deserving have not? When you’ve lived 20,000 days what should you have to show for it? What if you don’t have anything to show for it? And by the way, how do I account for my 20,000 days?
20,000 days is a bit like 20,000 leagues under the sea. You see a lot in 20,000 days, but eventually you want to come up for air. I look back and it’s really difficult to justify those 20,000 days. What did I do to deserve them? Why were they given to me? Why is there even a me? Have I made a good accounting of myself? To whom? To myself? To my parents? My family? My friends? My enemies? People in general? To Goodness in the abstract? To God?
Was my life full? Is it like a glass of water, now filled with 20,000 days of experience? Or is it like a glass of water almost empty, with 20,000 days now gone? Glass half full? Glass half empty?
Should I even define my life in terms of time? How about in terms of ideas? If I have a new thought run through my head every ten seconds, and I’m awake 16 hours a day, that’s 120 million ideas that will flow through my head in 57 years. What if 100 million of those ideas were ordinary, 15 million were bad, and 5 million were good, then where do I stand?
Who cares? It’s my birthday after all. Five million good ideas should be worth something!
Or maybe my life should be judged based on acts. Let’s say I do something significant every hour or so. Then in 57 waking years I’ve performed 333,333 acts. Maybe they fall on a bell curve and 2% or 6,666 of them have been truly significant acts. 6,666 sounds like a lot of good, but it reminds me of the year of the beast. And who defines what’s good anyway?
If you compare me at day 20,000 to myself at days 1000, 2000, 3000, on up to day 19000, you’d find that I wasn’t exactly the same person all the time. Some parts of my character were set early. Others were shaped and sometimes mangled by events. It almost doesn’t seem fair to give me credit or to condemn me for things that happened decades ago. I gained a lot of weight around day 16,000. But I fought back and lost some of it, but not all of it. If you judge my entire life, how much do I weigh?
20,000 days is a lot of time. So much time that it makes me feel really guilty that I haven’t accomplished more, accumulated more, achieved more, traveled more, seen more movies, ridden more roller coasters, gotten more degrees, played more games, smelled more flowers, told more jokes, remembered more jokes, remembered more names, worked more jobs, invented more and discovered more (not to imply that I ever invented or discovered anything). In 20,000 days with a lot of luck I could have been President, maybe been a war hero, or have painted masterpieces, written Great American Novels, played the piano, the guitar, and the drums, built a castle (no mere house for me!), read more books, exercised more, said "thank you" more, smiled more, gotten even with enemies more, stood up for myself more, and backed off from being a jerk more.
Normal stuff is what I’m most proud of. If I’ve been a decent spouse or parent or friend - and the jury’s definitely still out - then that’s what counts. The gross interval of time - 20,000 days - doesn’t mean much in comparison.
When I look back, and it doesn’t really much matter how old I am when I do, I wonder where has the time gone? The 20,000 days of sand don’t seem to have piled up at the bottom of the 20,000-day egg timer, but have disappeared forever leaving memories that are like little sustainable recycled bits of my life. Good memories mean a lot. But bad memories and sad memories do too. Suffering counts.
Around day 19,580 I became a Christian. Compared to people who’ve been Christians their entire known life, that’s pretty late in life. But some things take more time than you think. Sometimes a lot more time than you’ll live or ever hope to live. Some things never happen. Some very good things never happen. But sometimes they do.
A life that is committed to God has a different quality than one that’s more mired in the world. I used to be someone who feared the idea of nothing, who believed that when I die, all that’s left is nothing, and that my life, ultimately, in the end, counted for nothing. When the background and backdrop for your life is a black nothingness, then you tend to focus on the here and now and life itself is a struggle with and against aging and death. The mindset is that you can put on the good fight, but you inevitably lose in the end. Bad, sad, unfair and tragic. Accept your fate and grin and bear it.
My mindset as a Christian is similar. I still believe you’ve got to accept your fate and grin and bear it. Lots of bad, sad, unfair and tragic stuff will happen in life. I’m surely going to die in the end. And I’m still going to put on a good fight struggling against age and death. The difference is the focus and the backdrop. If you believe in nothing, you can’t focus on it because there is no perspective. Inevitably you shrug your shoulders and focus on things in this world. However, when you believe in God your perspective is shifted and aligned and can actually be focused. If your God is a personal Jesus, then the focus is on the relationship with him, and an understanding of his sacrifice, your own sin, and his forgiveness. Plus the black backdrop of nothingness is lifted to reveal a depth and richness to God and the world that is both overwhelming and comforting.
Come to think of it, it’s kind of like being born in the first place!
You can send Stew a Happy Birthday greeting via email here.
