Realizing Life

Trying to make sense of our world is getting increasingly difficult. With the playground mentality of the current world of politics and elections to the horrific world of terrorism based on warped ideologies, it's hard to know what we can expect for the future. The world in which many of us grew up, albeit somewhat naive, was nonetheless basically pleasant and free of fears and threats. Of course, that is a trick the mind plays on us as we edit our memories of days gone by. 

In Thorton Wilder's play, Our Town, one of the main characters, Emily, has died but is given permission thereafter to go back and relive one day of her life. She chooses to go back to the day of her 12th birthday. She is greatly disappointed because that experience brings home the hard reality of what that day was really like. She was hoping to relive a day of great fun and family celebration. That's apparently how her memory replayed it for her. But as the reliving experience unfolded, she realized that things weren't exactly as she supposedly remembered them. Everyone was too busy to the point of paying very little attention to her or even to the fact that it was her birthday. In the midst of that, in exasperation she says, "Doesn't anyone ever realize life while they live it?"

Every once in awhile I get into a state of mind and heart that makes me pause to consider if I am "realizing life while I live it." 

I saw an interview with Dick Van Dyke, who just turned 90 years old, in which Tavis Smiley asked him the classic life philosophy question. His answer was, "Don't do anything that isn't fun." Of course, with a reality check, Dick Van Dyke supposedly has the money and circumstances which more easily allow him to be very selective, whereas in most of our lives, we don't have such a privilege. But, then again, maybe we're not being as honest and selective as we really could be. I don't know--that's a personal question for each of us to ask I guess.

I know for myself that it would be of great benefit to me to begin each day thinking about that. What can I do today to "realize life" while I have it to live? I think the first thing to keep in mind would be to be perfectly honest about it: Even though there are things I must do today that I don't particularly want to do, is there some place in the day ahead that I can find a moment or moments for being fully alive with joy?  I think the second thing to keep in mind would be: If not, why not? And the answer to that may very well be that we don't think we deserve it. (Sad conditioning from unauthorized intruders into our personal  well-being) And the third thing to keep in mind is that the point of life is to live it while we have it.

Do you remember the commercial for V8 Juice that has people slapping their heads and saying, "I could've had a V8!"? Wouldn't it be sad if we passed from this life to the next with that kind of reaction to how we might have lived our lives? Just a thought.