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By Phil Callaway
THIS SUMMER, I’m realizing that I have reached
middle age. The first sign was that my children and my clothes are now the
same age. Time for that long-awaited midlife crisis!
The thing about reaching middle age is that, if you
have any brains left, you start to realize you’re running out of
time. Time to do things you vowed you’d do when you were 24.
And so, one sunny Saturday, you find yourself behind a
16,000-hp ski boat being steered by a former high school friend named
Attila, hanging onto a towrope, trying to avoid fishing boats and beads of
water that smack you in the eyes like buckshot. “What the world am I
doing?” you’re screaming, and Attila thinks you want him to
speed up.
Every few weeks I get together with five other
middle-aged guys for something we call the Circle of Six. It’s an
eating group, really, though we founded it with grander plans.
The group has been growing (pun intended) for a dozen
years now, thanks to some incredible cheesecake of our own making, and as
we hit the middle years, I noticed that some of us are engaging in
activities we wouldn’t have dreamed of back when we had our minds.
For instance, one of the guys (I won’t name
names, but I will tell you that Ron Nickel receives this guy’s credit
card statements) bought a high-powered motorcycle, then sold it when he
came within a whisker of crashing.
Another took up hang-gliding and limped to our meeting
a few weeks ago, holding his lower back and making sounds somewhat akin to
those of an overworked mule. (Again, I wouldn’t dream of telling you
his name, but for the sake of this article, we’ll call him Vance
Neudorf.)
We got to sitting around the fire, the six of us,
talking of things we intended to do when we were younger but haven’t
because we’ve been held back by time. Or our loving wives. Or our
insurance agents.
“I’d like to cycle across the
country,” said one. Everyone nodded. “Garden with my
wife,” said another. Everyone gasped. One even confessed he’d
like to learn the ukulele and give concerts. I won’t tell you who it
was, but we found this funny too.
Then came stories of parents who had grand plans for an
adventuresome retirement, who salted away money for travel only to discover
that they’d run out of health once they got there; they’d run
out of time.
I guess we spend our early years wishing time would
hurry up, our middle years trying to find more of it, and our latter years
wondering where in the world it went. We get so busy with the blur of
schedules and the stuff of earth that we neglect the celebration of today.
Time is one versatile guy. It flies. It heals all
wounds. Time can be wasted. Time will tell. Time marches on. Time runs out.
Everywhere in the Western world are reminders of time.
We have clocks on our wrists and our cell phones, our
stereos and dashboards, on street signs and buildings. We dangle clocks
around our necks, in our pockets and in every room of the house. One day
archaeologists will dig up our stuff and say, “Hey, they must have
worshipped these things. Stand back, this one’s still
ticking.”
Some people are very organized when it comes to time.
They write lists of things they will do with their day. That way, they
don’t have to spend time remembering things; they can spend their
time looking for the paper they wrote the list on.
To avoid the avalanche of time, middle-agers buy
juicers, yogacize, nip, tuck, wear Spandex, medicate, diet, visit 4.5
million ‘anti-aging’ websites and try another diet (one that
‘really works.’)
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We are constantly trying to make up for lost time. We
rush about as if we’re going to find it somewhere, hoping all the
while that time is on our side. We get so stressed out we start drinking
Maalox like it’s gravy.
We wonder: What would it be like to slow down? And if
we slow down, will we have a nervous breakdown? Materialism and speed have
doused the fire in our souls. Summertime should remind us to go looking for
matches.
“Teach us to number our days, so that we may be
wise,” wrote the psalmist. And if we number them, we just may find
that we don’t have enough time left for petty stuff like discussing
someone else’s failures. Or how the soloist should have tuned up
before singing last Sunday. We won’t have time to whine and complain
that the previous generation got it wrong and the next generation
doesn’t get it at all.
We won’t have time for things that are really
ugly and disgusting, including much of what’s on tabloids and
television. We won’t have time to sit around comparing what
can’t be taken to the next world. Things like bank accounts, titles
and achievements.
If we find those matches and reignite that fire in our
souls, we will discover that time is precious; that we should spend it
brightening someone’s day, helping those less privileged, loving the
forgotten and gazing into the night sky. After all, no matter our age, we
have less time than we think.
Yesterday is a memory, tomorrow is an assumption, and
this moment that we say we have . . . just passed.
A wise friend says: “How you spend your time is
more important than how you spend your money. Make a mistake with money and
it can be fixed – but time is gone.”
In her excellent book Time
Peace, my friend Ellen Vaughn reminds us that
“in the end, people’s beliefs – their worldview –
determine their attitude toward time.”
As a Christian, I believe we are stewards of whatever
God gives us – including the days we have left. Because of Christ, we
are promised the riches of eternity – where time will be extinct. But
for now, we are allowed the riches of today.
I’d like to spend my remaining days spreading
grace and joy around. As A.W. Tozer wrote, “May the knowledge of Thy
eternity not be wasted on me!”
Who knows? I might even sign up for those ukulele
lessons, after all.
Phil Callaway’s new
book is Family Squeeze. Visit him at www.laughagain.org.
July 2008
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