Transience and transcendence

Every so often I end up listening to Five For Fighting’s “100 Years”–really listening, not just putting it on as background music. That’s usually a dangerous prospect; John Ondrasik manages to cram a lifetime in a few minutes and powerfully depicts just how quickly life seems to fly by. The song seems to trigger a little anxiety attack–more of an “anxiety ache”, really–at the prospect that life is flying by and I’ve got so little to show for it. But then I never expected to be king of the world by now or anything. I never had dreams of being the next Napoleon, Carnegie, Gates, Washington, Ghandi or Mandela. Daydreams, perhaps, but never serious desires.

Oh, I’ve certainly hoped from time to time I’d be a little more known, a little more influential than I am. And perhaps I thought by this point in my life I’d have it all together, have at least most of the answers, and perhaps maybe even feel my age rather than the timid, eager teenager peering out from inside an increasingly aging body I continue to feel like. Instead I push on through life waiting to be exposed for the fraud that I am, the not-so-great-Oz behind the curtain.

But really, truth be told, when I really was a teenager, looking unsteadily into the future, I don’t recall having any grand vision of where I’d be in twenty-five years’ time. What little I saw of the future looked a lot like…well, what I’ve got now. A wife, kids, a house, a yard, a job, enough money to have a little fun from time to time. In many ways my life has exceeded my vision–the Finnish wife was a real surprise–and proven much more interesting than anything I might have planned back then.

So why does “100 Years” hit me so hard? Are there regrets for what might have been? Regrets over what has been? Of course there are. I’ve made my share of mistakes (and then some, being the greedy gus that I am), and I wouldn’t mind at least a handful of handfuls of do-overs. But invariably whenever I do trace life backward to identify that one thing I could change that would make everything just wonderful I come up empty. Too much is interconnected; remove this and somehow that also goes away with it. Too many things I might consider changing would end up wiping out so much that’s good in my life. And so I’ve learned to accept that my life is my life, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The past is past, and all I can choose now is the direction the future may take.

And even there experience has taught me that we only have so much control over the trajectory our lives will take–as often as not it’s what happens to us as where we choose to go.

So what’s my problem? Perhaps “accepting” does not equate to “at peace with.” Perhaps it really is the realization that I have so little influence in this world, and I’m not even doing as much as I should with that. Maybe it’s the realization that I’m still not the person I’d like to be, and that maybe even a hundred years won’t be enough to get there.

Sometimes I think life would be easier if I could be an unbeliever, that I could just accept that this is it and then we’re just so many disintegrating molecules. Perhaps that would take a lot of the pressure off if I could believe that what I get is what I get, and then it doesn’t matter. But no, I believe that, while transitory, this life has a broader purpose. And while you only take yourself with you when the time is up, you also take the sum of everyone you’ve influenced for bad or for good. My scorecard there is…well, not what I’d like it to be.

Even though I believe in a loving, just God who provided grace to cover my insufficiencies, I’m still frustrated by the gap between who I want to be and who I too often am. And the clock is ticking. I’ve only got a hundred years–less than that. I’ll only have my kids under my wing for another ten or so. I don’t think that will be enough time to undo the damage I’ve done from still trying to get my own act together while being responsible for helping them with theirs.

I suppose that’s the real message of the song: we only really have this current moment, and only so many current moments left to live. And that’s the pain behind the song. So many moments are passing by without me having lived them to the fullest, without my having using them as well as I could. And at the same time, that’s the hope behind the song, too. We don’t know how many more moments we have, but we do have them.

And that’s the hope provided by my Savior. He knows the pile of broken moments behind me can never be re-made. But they are transitory–they were meant to be transitory. He’s got it covered. Move on. Don’t waste time worrying about what’s behind. Worry about what lies ahead–not about getting it right, but getting it better. It’s not about the broken moments–there are always going to be more broken ones–but the ones you get right. It’s about changing your heart to be more like His. It’s not so much where we are when the time runs out, but which direction we are heading. It’s not about who we were, but who we are, and who we are still fighting to be.

I’m 45 for a moment
The sea is high
And I’m heading into a crisis
Chasing the years of my life

I suppose the only real “crisis” is the realization that there is only so much time left. There is so much one can do with each moment that is given you. There will be broken moments, to be sure. Some we will just completely, undeniably mess up. But the rest aren’t so clear. Was that the best thing I could have done with that moment? Was there something better I could have done?

In many ways life might be like baseball–or more like batting practice. In a hundred years we might see 52,560,000 “pitches”. We might start out hitting two or three out of every hundred. Some might decide it’s not worth the trouble and walk away. Some might decide to just stand there and watch pitches go by, waiting for the perfect pitch they can knock out of the park. But hopefully we stay in there, keep taking pitches, and learning while we go.

Perhaps we get to where we’re hitting 34 out of every hundred–excellent by pro baseball standards. But they’re mostly grounders and fouls with the occasional line-drive out of the infield. But we press on. Perhaps we get to where we’re only hitting about 24 percent, but they’re good, solid hits, the majority into the outfield. Or maybe we extend our grounders-and-fouls up to 44 percent.

That’s what I think it ultimately comes down to–not do we still miss the ball, but how well and how often we hit. Are we improving? Or did we decide to go sit in the dugout. We can sit there and dwell on how lousy we’ve been, or we can work harder at getting better than we were. Yes, it can be a little unnerving to watch the supply of baseballs dwindling, but that’s not what we should dwell on, either. It still comes down to the very next pitch and what we do with it. One pitch at a time–that’s how we build our record, our legacy.

I’m 45 for a moment. But hopefully I’m better at 45 than I was at 44. Just a moment and I’ll tell you.