That reminded me of something I'd read in Nouwen's Reaching Out a month or two about our illusion of immortality. Nouwen says that moving beyond our own mortality is key in making the movement from disillusionment to prayer (a movement toward real relationship with God.) The first time I read this section these words really convicted me:
Aren't the many feelings of sadness, heaviness of heart and even dark despair, often intimately connected with the exaggerated seriousness with which we have clothed the people we know, the ideas to which we are exposed and the events we are part of? This lack of distance, which excludes the humor in life, can create a suffocating depression which prevents us from lifting our heads about the horizon of our own limited existence.
In short, we are taking ourselves way too seriously. My life is important, but at the same time, it's just one life in the midst of a sea of billions taking place over thousands and millions of years. It will be over in a blink. And that's okay.
Two weeks ago I was on a plane going down to Ontario. I'd forgotten to print out my boarding pass until about 6 hours before my flight, which meant I ended up way in the back because everyone else is anal retentive and prints out their boarding pass the minute it's 24 hours before their flight. Anyway, since I was carrying on a bag I ended up in the very back of the plane looking for a place to put it in the overhead bin. I ended up in the second to last row. I can't remember the last time I sat that far back in a plane, and I'd forgotten how much more bumpy it is. Combine that with the fact that I don't fly nearly as often as I used to, and I found myself a bit nervous on a number of occasions as we encountered some bumps and turbulence. And there was one time on our way up that the ride was more than a little bumpy and I caught myself thinking "We're going down." Or at least I got to thinking about, "what would I do if we were going down right now?" Obviously I cannot give an answer for certain, because you can never be totally sure how you will react to a situation like that. But, I did realize that in that moment I'm not really sure how much I'd panic. Everything would happen rather quickly, and let's face it, worrying isn't going to do a damn thing to change the situation. Perhaps I would think, "hmm, I'm going to die now. How 'bout that." And then I realized, that's not the worst thing in the world; not even close.
And that weird, paranoid experience made me realize that maybe I'm just slightly less scared to die than I thought I was. Perhaps I believe in heaven (or the kingdom or whatever) more than I used to, even though I can't ever seem to explain why or come up with a completely desirable scenario of its existence (thank you Intro to Phil). My life is not my most valuable possession. Heck, it's not even a p
ossession of mine, come to think of it.Oh, and I did have a very happy birthday.
