Life is Brief, so Find the Beauty

I’m struck by the brevity of life today, as I wriggle today between two life-bookends.

Today is my daughter’s last day of kindergarten. Her life is stretched out in front of her like big, open canvass. And yet, it’s already slipping by too fast.

Yesterday I told her that, starting Saturday, she’d be a first-grader! She corrected me: “No, Dad,” she said. She has a whole summer to be “in-between” kindergarten and first-grade.

In other words, don’t rush it, Dad.

She’s wiser than she knows.

Tonight I fly south for the memorial service of a wise and kind uncle. He lived a full life and made a big impact.  But still, he died way too young.

Through most of life, I do my work and focus on family and friends. I read and write academic theology; I teach my classes. I get anxious about finances and the responsibilities of home ownership; I occasionally get riled up about injustices–big or small–though mostly my frustrations are directed at when things don’t go perfectly in my own little world.

As I roll on unthinkingly through life, I can forget about life’s brevity. I may take little or no stock of the value of each moment, of each event. I can get frustrated with myself; angry at “the world out there,” and can sometimes treat others around me as basically animated furniture.

I try to control the uncontrollable, to tightly manage my “self,” and in doing so, can cut off the flow of life. A flow that otherwise would reach out to others.

And yes, I can sometimes hate, rather than love.

But this life is too brief to restrict that flow; too valuable to fortify ourselves against its beauty, even when that beauty might terrify us at first?

If we were all a little bit better at keeping perspective, I wonder if we’d also be better at loving each other? Better at finding the beauty in each other? And better at creating it, too?

As I sit here, struggling to write some modest academic theology, none of which is going to change the world, I gladly confront that question for myself, and accept this injection of perspective.