The gift of the young is that they live their lives as if they are invincible, completely unaware of the pending last day of their life. Yet at the same time, they live as if each day is their last, free of the tedium responsibility of life. We as parents come along beside and try to interject the weight of becoming an adult. Hopefully, we do that well and balanced. However my focus today is not on raising children to adulthood . I want to talk about that sense of urgency to live life well, that innate ability that the young possess, that awareness that adults, if wise, will cultivate.
Evidently, I have approximately 12,933 days left to live my life. That’s 35.41 more years. I am aware of this because I stumbled across a site last week, 17000 days with a simple message:
Life is short. You’re going to die; I am, too. So let’s quit wasting time.
At first it made feel panicked. Counting down the potential days of my life is a bit stressful! (By the way, you can join me in this awareness of your impending death. How many days do you have left to live?)
But then I remembered that I know this focus already.
I am a huge fan of Patti Digh’s work. I speak of it often. Her great work began with the acute knowledge that life is brief and the end can come suddenly. Patti changed the focus of her life when her step-father died just 37 days after a cancer diagnosis. Patti was the most recent guest on How She Really Does it with Koren Motekaitis and told her story again and I learned that it was actually on day 38 that Patti woke up and asked herself what would become the guiding question of her life, “what would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?” It was that profound of a moment.
The question for me today is what is my profound moment? What is motivating me right now to make the choices that I am making? As much as I am doing that I know is right, I still have an overwhelming sense that I am missing some very important things. Life is short and I don’t want to waste another moment.
The urgency that I am feeling today is to order my days. I have been resisting the idea that I need a framework, a structure to my time. It is reactionary to the life I lived in response to Christian teaching. I’ve spent some time now swinging the pendulum to the other side, flinching when anything resembled the over ordered life I had. But if I have learned anything, I have learned that I want to live a balanced life. This isn’t about all or nothing and I certainly don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Back at the end of October, I started the Deep Fearless painting adventure with Connie Hozvicka. One of the first things we did was to identify our devotion. It’s a little different from calling or purpose. At least it is framed differently and it was much easier for me to hone in on a specific idea.
My devotion is Creating Space and here is the painting I created in response to my devotion:
As long as I can remember, I have loved the process of creating space for others … From Bible study groups, to homeschooling support groups, to conversations about Spirituality. The problem is that I haven’t done so well at creating space for myself and I feel that I neglected some areas of creating space for my family. That is what I am getting back to now. It’s why I am going to school and it is why I am quitting my job. I am looking for that balance of created space.
When I ask myself the question that Patti asks herself each day, “what would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?”, my initial answer comes from a reaction to regrets. It is overly focused on trying to correct things that I may not have done well. Patti spoke on Koren’s podcast about living those 37 days free of regret. Yes! When I come to day one of my last 37 days, I want to know that I will just continue living my life.
That begins today with imagining what that life is and creating the space to live it.
What about you? What sense of urgency are you feeling today?
