In the span of one week, I have had the opportunity to see my boys’ eyes light up while on a ride at Disneyland, one grandfather’s eyes light up at seeing my boys’ smiles, and another grandfather’s eyes go dim as he faced death.
It has been a whirlwind week.
And I’m exhausted.
I had the opportunity for a free evening tonight, and in my fatigue and freedom, I tuned in to ESPN to watch my beloved Padres win a baseball game with playoff implications. It was great; relaxing to a baseball game has been one of my favorite pastimes for as long as I can remember.
But then, once the game ended, I did what every red-blooded American male does with a remote in his hand: flipped mindlessly through the channels, pausing on the occasional show that captured my interest. I got to see some actor who willingly put himself in harm’s way, bearing the brunt of a snowstorm out in the wild, in the name of capturing footage of a “real” survival story. I watched a travel show on Prague, the lovely Bohemian city, where, I must admit, the scenery on the show made the city look much lovelier than I remember from my experiences in person. I watched more of ESPN, the repetitions of the sports highlights rendering my brain more and more numb with each showing.
I had a free night, and I filled the time with mind-killing inactivity.
We all do this. Some more than others, some for longer periods of time than others, but we all do this.
Why?
Why are we content to sit in front of a screen for hours at a time, when in reality, we could be living more, doing more, breathing more life into our days?
You see, with my recent confrontation with my grandfather’s death, I am reminded: what’s it all for, anyways? What is this life’s grand work, this life’s great scheme, that we are to take part in?
Is it watching TV?
Is it anesthetizing our loneliness/boredom/brokenness, with abject entertainment?
Or might there be more to it than that?
My grandfather was one who embraced life. He was one of those who, when he walked in a room, people noticed. Part of that was his personality, but a bigger part of that was his outlook. I would imagine he must have had a rather low tolerance for watching TV. He didn’t care about watching action, because he was the action.
Now, this is not an attempt to pay tribute to his life; I would be unable to do that in one short essay. But it is an attempt to look at one attribute he possessed, and ask ourselves if we might all be a little better off if we had a little bit of that ourselves?
But before we delve too deeply into that, I must go back to the title of this essay: mortality. What does embracing life and watching TV have to do with our mortality?
I believe they are directly related. You see, I have found that the more TV I watch, the more dull my mind gets. It can be restful, but only in increments of about 20 minutes. After that, a certain restlessness builds up inside; a certain swell of inactivity, in direct conflict with my own sense of life-giving nourishment. In my attempts to find rest, I actually become more restless. Which is an interesting word to describe it, because that is exactly what I experience: I rest less.
In my experience, when all I seek is rote entertainment, a little bit of me dies in lost opportunity.
Think about it. If I watch a 30-minute sitcom, I may have laughed a bit, been exposed to an endless display of stimuli we call advertising, and at the end of it, I often feel more fatigued than when I started.
Now, this really is not a knock on television—everything is fine in moderation.
But it is an attempt to ask some of the difficult questions about how we tend to find rest. For me, I tend to rest in front of the TV. For you, it may be something different. But in either case, the question is, if you are out to find rest, just how life giving is that rest you are seeking?
Is your “rest” exhausting?
Do you feel bombarded with stimuli, where you can’t remember the last time you sat in silence, or sat and read a novel, or sat in the shade of a large tree breathing in a gentle breeze?
Where are we finding our rest?
For when we can find our rest, we can begin to find our life.
And that is why I think rest is tied so closely with our own mortality. For, if I die a little bit with each passing sitcom, how is that going to fuel me for the times in my life when I really need a significant energy output?
If I cannot find rest, I will not be able to handle the rigors of this life.
If I cannot handle the rigors of this life, I may be unable to answer the calling God has on my life.
And if I cannot answer the call God has on my life, I will not experience the joy that comes from a life lived with purpose, a life lived to make a difference, a life lived to glorify God.
And that is ultimately what it’s all about. For if I can’t glorify the God who gives me breath, then I end up dying from the inside out. It seems that for many people, this is the fate they are surrendered to. Their bodies just take years to catch on…
And so, we live lives of insignificance. As Thoreau said, we live lives of “quiet desperation”.
Is that the legacy we want to leave behind when our grandkids are reflecting on our lives?
Yeah, my grandpa was always around, but I never saw him laugh much, live much, talk much…
I know we all want more than that.
And I am convinced that we can have it, it just takes a little practice, a little discipline.
A discipline of rest, so we can enjoy the fruits of life. A willingness to face our own mortality, our own frailty; an admission that we all need recharging on a regular basis, so we can embrace this precious life with vigor.
What will our legacy be?
May we find today, a determination to pursue a life-giving rest, in order to be equipped to offer our lives, our souls, our gifts, and our talents, to others, that they too may see the glory of the God who gives us our finite number of days…
