How do you spend your precious life?
My task here is to convince you of the great value of your life. Because I think your time is precious, I will try to be brief.
Some time ago, I visited my soon-to-be 31-year-old daughter in her home in Austin, TX. We did many things but the time I liked best was when we camped at a coffee house for an hour or two and then went next door to a vinyl record store. It reminded so much of the “special time”, as we called it, we shared each week when she was a little girl. I didn’t realize at the time how important that time would look in the rear-view mirror. I’ll go so far as to say that whatever destiny I might have fulfilled to this point in my life, that time was a significant part of it — shaping her life, shaping mine.
Treat your life as the incredibly limited resource it is. Please think twice, make that three times, before you give a significant part of your life over to television. I try not to be too preachy but I’m not shy about this point.
One morning my mind was concerned with many Monday tasks and I was ready to make a “To Do” list and then attack it. While grabbing a snack from our break room, though, I peered out a big window and saw a light coating of snow, fresh from the early morning. I saw tall evergreen trees, and two birds happily trying out perches on a building that had no doubt been lovingly designed by an architect 20 years ago. I realized that this scene had rescued me from the brink of a little functional insanity, and I thanked God for this intervention.
When I think about the best moments of my childhood, almost all of them involved doing things that seem pretty mundane by today’s standards: Circling the airports (that appear as airplanes) on a state map; Walking to get doughnuts, cutting through the graveyard on the way; Taking the money we earned by mowing lawns to the curb market to buy penny candy. What they had in common was that we were in the moment, single-tasking. We hadn’t even heard of Zen but we were monks in our own way.
When you go through today, give yourself fully to another. Laugh. Take a recess period like you did when you were in elementary school. Read something really difficult that takes all your concentration. Call one of your in-laws. Go outside at night and look up at the stars. And whatever you do, do it with you whole heart.
