Articles
FALL CHANGES
August 20, 2004
There's something in the air. Have you noticed it? Even though it's still summertime and the living is easy, there is a hint that these lazy days are numbered. Maybe it's those back-to-school ads, the political campaigns, or the fact that September is just a page away. Vacations will be over, and we'll all be taking life a little more seriously.
It's a time of change, and I'm not just talking about leaves. It is a time for reflection, taking inventory. For some, it's a nostalgic, even melancholy thing, as in "the autumn of one's life". Something about the season demands that we review the priorities, and deal with the more serious, sometimes existential matters of living. What IS it all about?
Then there's September 11. The day we all took inventory. Days like that have a way of casting serious light on the existential concerns. We all knew what mattered most on that day. We prayed. We cried. We hugged the people we loved the most, and some we didn't even know. We gave blood. We used words like "meaning" and "purpose". Which IS what it's all about.
For years, I have counseled victims of rape or other heinous crimes. I've worked with suicidal people and with those who have lost someone beloved to suicide or homicide. I have debriefed emergency rescue personnel who had carried the dead out of the disaster aftermath. And I have witnessed the devastating pain of the end of a relationship. In my experience, the survival, reconciliation and healing of these events is a function of two things: time and meaning.
But surely we don't need a traumatic event to find meaning in our lives. John Lennon said it, but I think maybe he got it from the Buddhists: "Life is what happens while you're busy making plans".
Certainly pain, loss, illness and oppression hold abundant opportunity for meaning. Just consider the murder of Martin Luther King or the ongoing struggle for human rights throughout the world. But meaning and purpose are not reserved just for tragic times. Happy, ordinary people discover profound meaning in life every day. How? By living on purpose. By carpe-ing the Diem. Seizing the day. Realizing that today IS your life, and it's about choices. What is your passion, and are you pursuing it?
Each day offers an opportunity to show our love to those we most cherish, to extend kindness to a stranger, to give blood, time or money to a cause. To take a walk and realize the miraculous in the ordinary, to look into the eyes of a homeless person, or better yet, to volunteer at a shelter, soup kitchen or AIDS clinic.
The Byrds said it, but I think maybe they got it from the Bible: "To everything there is a season, and to every season a purpose under the heavens." Meaning is available every day in every season, but to find it, we must be awake. Alert to the opportunities.
Turn off the electronic distractions for a while and let yourself be drawn to a life lived on purpose every day, every season. To wait for a tragedy to give life value and meaning would be a tragedy in and of itself. Your life is NOW.
The Guess Who said it and I don't know where they got it: "Seasons changed and so did I..." As the season changes and the leaves turn so beautifully, so symbolically, so can you.
Yes, there is something in the air. I think I'll go take inventory.
