Month After Month

This paragraph is my false start. There’s a little plaque on our wall that says, “God put me here to accomplish certain things – right now I’m so far behind, I’ll never die.” If only that were true. If only we got to finish everything we wanted to finish…

Real start, next paragraph.

I was reading one day and these words jumped out at me: “Month after month”. I reread them. When I was young, these words would not have stopped me. They would have meant very little to me. Now, after passing that indescribable age of sixty – I’m still reaching for it in the air – it does stop me. Now I know this phrase deep in my soul and heart and mind. Month after month now passes in an undeniable, somewhat confusing sort of way. Poof! Another month, another half a year, another year – is gone. Forget “month after month”; now it’s “year after year”. How does time fly faster when you get older? Does it fly faster? Of course not. How could it? And yet…

Sometimes it feels like I’m in a pharaoh’s chariot with six horses (or Charlton Heston’s chariot in Ben-Hur – okay, Charlton only had four horses and that’s twice the normal number), and they’re pulling me forward at a neck-break pace, but when I pull on the reins to slow them down, they just want to go faster. Another month, another smile, another sorrow, another birthday…time passes. Time passes. Sometimes at neck-break speeds, sometimes so slowly we feel it in our veins.

What does this mean for us? Are we enjoying every wonderful moment or thing in our lives? Are we striving to not let negative, hurtful, depressing things get the better of us? Are we living the best we can, or are we letting life pass us by on our TV or phone screens? How do we feel about where we’ve gone and who we’ve been? (This is not a judgment call for those who can’t do what the average person can do or can afford to do. Only you personally know what you’re capable of.)

Then there’s the quote from the false-start paragraph above. Have we done everything we planned to do? Everything we wanted to do? Did we climb a mountain (real or metaphorical) or swim in an ocean? Did we buy a house, have a family, write that book…?

How did we get to this point? Still working, still living life…but knowing the days are counting down. For us and for our loved ones. How do we acknowledge this with joy – for the wisdom we’ve gained, the people we’ve touched or who’ve touched us, the things we’ve done, and the places we’ve seen – and the time we have left to keep gaining, touching, doing, and seeing?

Where do we go from here? What has become most important to us – that which we don’t want to leave unfinished, uncaptured, unloved…? Should we spend as much time as possible doing what we haven’t yet accomplished, or should we spend more time with our family and friends? The only person who can answer these questions is ourselves. Only we get to decide which we'll do and to implement a plan to do it. Or leave the earth one day unfinished, undone, unknown… What do you want done more than anything else? Do it for yourself or do it for your loved ones. Just do it. Your voice will be missed, but if your voice is never heard, it cannot be missed. Do it. Be. While you still can.