But for those who look fondly, and thankfully, back on the last year, the year ahead will bring challenges. These people never grow old; they believe that until death there must be chances for success, improvement, joy, gratitude. A few days ago I met an 85-year-young man who was learning to play the violin. And why not?
For those who don’t care, there will never be challenges, and that’s a pity. Many of these people will die before they ever actually live. So, let’s take a look at our own viewpoints and briefly reflect on the paradox of time. In a recent poll the most common expression of 2010 wasn’t “Good Morning” or “How are you?” as in previous years, but rather “I am sorry. I have no time.”
Unfortunately this is also a common excuse given for our failings and shortcomings. We haven’t time to call, to write, to smile, to eat or to sleep. Parents don’t have time to care for their children. Children don’t have time to listen and do what their parents ask of them. We have family members running in opposite directions and never meeting–or running right into each other and crashing.
Would it not be better idea to make our journeys walking side by side, hand in hand, helping each other? When husbands don’t make time for their wives, and vice versa, couples don’t have time to love, to share. Sometimes couples try to make time in their busy schedules then chalk these efforts up as “wasted time.” But the truth is this “wasted time” can surprise us by becoming the most valuable time.
If we want to make our journeys through life meaningful and memorable, we must remember the story of the blind man and the cripple. They were able to make their journeys together: one would see where to go while the other did the walking.
Side by side. Hand in hand. Helping each other.
So, we don’t have time. Why is that? We are living in an age when modern technology has furnished our lives and our homes with all sorts of time-saving gadgets. We live in an age of instant coffee, TV dinners, and on and on…. Perhaps we need to utilize these conveniences more efficiently and remember the days when boiling a kettle in the morning meant lighting a fire first. (Producing some smoke after an hour was an accomplishment!) Yet our parents and grandparents very rarely, if ever, complained they had no time. They always seemed to have plenty of time for everything back then.
As we consider carefully the year just gone and the year just beginning, let’s keep in mind a few important things:
a) there is no past except in our memories
b) the future only exists in our imaginations
c) what we really have is the present.
There is no point in regretting or wishing “if only we could begin all over again.” It’s not a matter of “if.” We can and we must. Life begins whenever we decide to begin living. Today, after all, is the very first day of the rest of our lives, no matter how young or old we are.
