March 17, 2008

• We know that life is something because we cannot sit still.  Imagine a person sitting perfectly still in a chair without thinking.  This is obviously not what we do everyday.  Now think about what your life actually looks like.  Thus, we know that life is something because we cannot sit still, and we know what it is by thinking about sitting still and our actual lives and taking the difference. 

  Or take the actual fact of the case, which is that we wake up to start each day.  This means the default state of human beings is being supine and unconscious.  This is the bottom line of the day; your life can be described as what happens after that fact.  Picture your eyes opening slowly at the dawn of day; you are resuming the main event, like diving back into the pool after a break.  We see physical reality, we are drenched with life again. 

  From this moment on, we begin smothering life’s canvas once more.  As seconds are shoved into the past, we think certain thoughts and say certain words, which then become the content of our lives.  Every day starts blank, then at the end we can look back and see the completed picture that was the day. 

  The greatest illustration of life’s format of waking and living each day is the movie Groundhog Day.  It seems we have all been thrust into this bizzare recurring theme of waking each day and interacting with the other humans; every day the same thing!  This is what happens to Bill Murray.  Haven’t you ever awoken and thought, “I’m here again … weird.”  By watching the movie you can see all the different ways it is possible for each day to be lived based on how we choose to live them.  Our actions and words steer each day toward a certain destination.  And soon enough our days become our lives. 

  Life is the ultimate improvisation; we are deciding how to live it every moment.  I experienced this truth with a few friends about a week ago when we were playing Lord of the Rings Risk and I started asking them which movie has the line, ‘Never tell me the odds.’  One of them got that it was Star Wars, but they couldn’t get that it was The Empire Strikes Back (Han Solo says it to C-3PO).  But then a debate ensued over where it was in the movie, one of the options being when he is about to go look for Luke in the snowstorm, the other being when they begin to fly through an asteroid field.  One of them went into the family room and began looking for the movie to find out while we continued discussing it.  He played the movie and we found out that it was when they enter the asteroid field.

  Then suddenly I realized that all the things that were happening were resulting from the fact that I had began asking the question about the movie line.  But I hadn’t planned to say it, but then I did, and it became the content of our lives for the next few minutes.  I talked with one of the guys about this phenomenon for the next minute or so, and our minds were quite blowing up.  Thus, we concluded, everything in our lives is here because of all the things that happened before it that people and ourselves might not have done but did.

  At any given moment we can say anything, and add to the picture we are seeing the words we have in mind.  But we have the choice to add them or not.  If we add them, they will become a part of the conversation, and enter other people’s minds, but if we don’t, they won’t, and only we will know about them.  What an overwhelming reality this is, where we hold the freedom to say what we will.  But not only what we say matters; what we think is who we are.

  What an amazing thing life is!

  • 1:06 am
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