The Excuse of Life

There is no exact age when children begin to reason for themselves. Though a gross generalization, the age of seven, give or take a year, is when children enter into a developmental phase called the age of reason. They move into that stage beyond selecting their favorite bedtime story for the hundredth time in a row to being able to select from broader options; to consider what’s before them; how they’ll respond to stimuli. They start to plan and execute those plans.

Let’s assume that seven is the magical age of reason. Let’s also take the average life span of people in developed countries as seventy-nine years. Therefore, an average person with no major medical inhibitors will live capable of reasoning for themselves for about seventy-two years.¹

Seventy-two revolutions around the sun; nearly 631,000 hours; just over 37.8 million minutes. Daily, the opportunities to make decisions number in the tens of thousands. That translates into into something on the order of half a billion decisions made in seventy-two years.

That is a lot of decisions! In fact, it’s a number so large that it’s meaningless. As Shreyas Kamath pointed out, “[we] suck at understanding big numbers.” We’re also not very good at time. Liesl Shurtliff quipped, “It’s difficult to tell how much time is really passing when you’re hungry and bored.”

In his 2017 book, book Long Way Down, author Jason Reynolds portrays the entire story in the time it takes the protagonist Will to ride down a really long elevator in his apartment building.

Have you ever wondered how many events can take place in the span of a single heartbeat?

Somewhere around 385,000 children will be born today. About that many will be born tomorrow. Even for many children born in dire circumstances, when they are young, the world is full of wonder.²

Everyone ages.

Some die too young.

Some die very old.

Most die across a spectrum spanning the two decades of the golden years.

There’s no avoiding it. Death is an inevitable part of life. About 500 people will die in the time it takes you to read this article.

There seems to be a general fear of death even among those who believe in a life after this one. However, many of our lifestyle choices are at odds with that fear. In other words, fear doesn’t motivate us enough to make wise choices about the way we fuel our bodies, how much sleep we get, or how much movement we participate in. We fear death yet do so little to prolong life. As we age, most of us allow the sense of wonder innate in each of us to be snuffed out by life’s cares. We go on, existing from day to day, without really embracing our experiences. Particularly in Western culture, we wear being over-worked on our sleeves like a badge of honor.

I have been guilty of believing that once I’ve achieved X number of dollars, I’ll have enough money to really start enjoying life. I’ll be able to afford to spend more time with my wife and children. I’ll be able to serve others more, unencumbered by the daily grind.

If your focus is on money you’ll never have enough. The desire to have more of it will always be there. The relentless pursuit of money has become an endemic problem of Western society, in particular. It is a pursuit that often robs us of enjoying life’s precious moments.

At the other extreme, the answer is also not leaving family and responsibility to live the life of a Hesychast monk (not for most people anyway).

In the middle, because the world seems to run on capitalism (modernized colonialism), so many people have been pushed to the point where both parents feel like they have to work to make ends meet. For single parents, the problem is far worse.

We shouldn’t have to make an excuse to live, but that’s how it is for so many (most?) people.

So. . .where does that leave us?

Intentionality.

Intentionality is being deliberate; purposive. It is making a decision not to simply exist but to live; to thrive. It’s a stop-and-smell-the-roses, laugh-too-loudly-with-your-loved-ones kind of living. It’s a return to that sense of wonder that diminished then disappeared with the pressure of life.

It takes tremendous discipline to get started. Until society as a whole makes a shift toward more intentional living, the capitalistic machine will continue to demand more of the masses.

Maybe it starts with just a few moments of laughter; a few moments of that leisure activity you’ve been putting off. (And, no, doom-scrolling social media doesn’t qualify as leisure.) Maybe it’s letting your imagination take you to a place and time when the troubles you carry don’t seem quite so heavy.

Whatever intentionally living looks like for you, the truth is it’s your life and you deserve to live it.

¹Arguably, there are many millions who give up reasoning for themselves in favor of allowing someone else to think for them. That is a topic for another day.

²There is, perhaps, no greater tragedy than a child born into a home where that sense of wonder is snuffed out through abuse and neglect.