I was going to follow up on my last post by writing about storms today. (I'll come back to that one later.) Instead, because it is fresh in my brain, I'm going to give you a preview of the huge topic that has consumed most of my thinking for the past year or more: time.
Time is a really weird thing. And I will confess up front that time, as measured by clocks and calendars, doesn't hold a lot of importance to me. Being on time to events isn't a high priority. In fact, I don't like being on time and hate being early. But it isn't just that. I also don't really care how long a meeting lasts. I don't care which day we celebrate a birthday. My wife asks me when I will be done at work? I don't know. Probably right after I finish.
Rather than in minutes and hours and days, to me, time is expressed as too early, or too long, or too soon, or just right.
If the meeting lasted too long it isn't that it took too many minutes. It is that we didn't use the time well. Some 30 minute meetings feel like a life-sapping trial. Other, much longer meetings leave me energized and wishing we could continue. It isn't about the minutes.
This attitude is something I have really had to work on as an adult. Because, while time doesn't mean much to me (it seems pretty arbitrary), it means a lot to others. And I can't say I care about people if I dismiss what is important to them.
And there's the rub. I may not care about the quantity of time, (the minutes) but I absolutely care about the quality of it (the moments). A minute is just a measurement. A moment is an event. I love moments. They matter.
Anyway. I'm skipping the "storms" topic today, because last week, I watched a movie titled "About Time". It's a British, romantic comedy with the key word here being "British". We Americans like our comedies quick witted, scene changing, surface level stuff. Like SNL or MTV, we don't even want to say the full names of the shows. British movies are different. They let you agonize in the uncomfortable situations, the funny ones and the heart warming ones and the tragic ones, for way more than two seconds. You just sit in it. It's brutal.
"About Time" is like that. It has some humor and some romance. But it also has a heavy dose of profound conviction. (At least it did for me.) Kind of like "Four Weddings and a Funeral" meets "Dead Poets Society".
I don't know if I recommend it. It is rated R and is kind of slow at times. But it has its cute and funny moments, and it received pretty good reviews. Mainly, though, I liked it, but I don't know how good it is. I do know that it shifted me. I was going along through life and this movie came along and pushed me off my trajectory. Probably was worth the $3 rental.
Without going into the movie at all, here's the gist of what I got out of it: I only get one shot at life. I know this, but it doesn't feel that way. Life feels more infinite. It feels like there will always be more of it. More time. More minutes.
I know I won't live forever. I know I will die. It just doesn't feel that way. So, I procrastinate. I shy away from the hard things. I'm selfish.
Of course the cliche response is to live life like it was your last day. That kind of works. If today was my last day, I'd live it differently, because it brings the finite-ness of life into perspective when you know the amount of it you have left.
However, this perspective doesn't really work longer than, say, about a day. I can't live each day like I'm going to die tomorrow, because I'm not. Much, if not most, of life needs to be lived with the perspective that I am not going to die tomorrow. (Is there really any reason to eat healthy if you aren't going to make it another 36 hours?) If we all lived like we were going to die tomorrow, we'd be in some kind of screwed up world full of self-serving, myopic, fat, starving, hedonistic adolescents. (Hmm.)
In reality though, that death-bed perspective doesn't lead to more joy or life for me or for anyone else. It leads to regret. Life needs to be lived with the full expectation I will live a long life full of the consequences of my current decisions. Because, while I might not be currently dying, this moment is.
I've been the recipient of many second chances, but I don't get a second chance at life. More so, I don't get second chances at that moments that make up my life. I just get another moment and that moment is lived with the full perspective of how I lived the last one.
Right now, I get to write this blog. I can choose to do it or not. I can engage in it or not. I can choose to enter this moment for all that it is... or not. Later today, I will get an opportunity to squeeze joy and laughter and tears from time with my kids, time with my wife. Instead, I may choose to play on my phone, and right after I do, that moment will be dead, and because I probably won't be, I will need to live with the consequences of that choice. And my kids will be impacted by that choice. And my marriage will be better or worse for it. And my life will go on.
Jesus once told a story about what it means to be a neighbor (Luke 10:30-37). It was a story of a man who was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road and he was passed up by those who were more concerned about their own safety and life than that of another. However, a Samaritan, a social outcast, stopped and cared for the man and made sure he had assistance until he was well.
There are several applications you can pull from this story, but what jumps out at me today is not the compassion that was shown the beaten man, but the willingness for the Samaritan to interrupt his day in response to the moment in which he found himself. It is possible that the first two people were compassionate to the beaten man's plight. They may have felt badly for him, but their potential compassion didn't outweigh their own self-interest or the importance of their afternoon schedules. The third man though, regardless of feelings, stopped what he was doing.
If the third man had been a patrolman sent out to look for victims of muggings, we wouldn't call him a neighbor. We would just say he was doing his job. He was on his way somewhere. He noticed the man. He stopped what he was doing. He made himself late. Later, he set the man up in an inn so that the beaten man was cared for and went about his business because life goes on and this wasn't his last day. The minutes keep ticking by.
This is really hard, but I'm trying to do it. I'm trying to notice the moments. I'm trying to respond to them.
Go ahead. Try it for one day. 24 hours. 1,440 minutes. See how you feel. See how your kids feel. Your husband, your wife, your neighbor, the frazzled mother of three in the condiment aisle. You don't have to walk the roads looking for the injured man. You just have to keep your eyes open and respond to the moment when it happens.
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