In our lifetime there is always the proclivity to make a difference in the world, albeit within our realm of influence. Whatever it might be, it must define our meaning: the why’s in our lives. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
The “why-s” that we live for may vary within the stages of our lifetime. During the school years, our whys could have been to complete our course or fulfil our dreams of a career. Perhaps soon after graduation or even while studying, we fall in love and dream of building a family. And with these runs the concomitant aspirations for providing for a family like homes, cars, education, food, travels, etc. As we near the sunset of our lives, we begin to ask what will be the legacy I can leave behind. Even those who led a mediocre life at this point struggles with the question of what mark will I be remembered when I leave this place.
Everyone’s life must have been led with a purpose. At least no one will claim theirs had no purpose. It is an egoistic response to the value of their existence. However, when you scratch beneath the surface, one invariably finds disappointment. Is that all there is to life?
If the purpose was for committing to a relationship, have I really given my all? If it was for raising a family, have my offspring turned out well? If it was for service to a community, have I given what was expected? Where did the loving feeling go? Is it enough? Will they remember? After these questions, we realise the inadequacy, the incompleteness, the “falling short” on what we have set out to achieve.
The other extreme points to not owning up to this kind of thinking but espouse rather the dictum: Life is short, enjoy what you can!
There is nothing but truth in the first part of this phrase: Life is short. The problem is when we take this as the only guiding principle in our lifetime. When that happens, we digress into “panic” mode and, excuse the cliché, the tyranny of the urgent. Everything must be experienced, tasted, sought after no matter what gives or it may be lost forever. This is living in hyper-stress – the purview of the workaholic, the over achievers and the unsatisfied. The compunction is to do everything that comes your way because life is short. Work becomes a rat race to the top. Pleasures must be instant. Relationships are impermanent in its base.
The second part, enjoy what you can or its commercialised version – just do it!, engenders at its worst the greed to have it all. On a practical level, this dictum makes one oblivious to goodness or quality in favour of quantity. It is not any more possession because of need but status; not pleasure because of the enjoyment it brings but only because “I can”. Enjoyment is a result of the choices we make from a discerning disposition, from something we work on and not from simply because we can.
This then brings us to the fallacy of life is short- enjoy what you can presupposes first, that this is the only life to live. There is another life after death and this belief alters the playing field. Second, the path towards my happiness depends on my choices of what is good.
On one hand, our lives wonder if we have done enough. On the other, we suffer the wrong choices we have made because of mistaken values. Both are sins of omission and commission. Is this what fallen nature of man means? Truly only our hope of a faithful God will save us from ourselves. Help us Lord in our unbelief.
